'M'^m, 




2n«3 'COT^V, 
18QS. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelf...._T4~ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



3 1898 



C£C 2 1898 



QUIET TALKS 

WITH EARNEST PEOPLE 

IN MY STUDY. 



QUIET TALKS 

WITH EARNEST PEOPLE 

IN MY STUDY 



BY J 

CHARLES EDWARD JEFFERSON 

Pastor of the Broadway Taberttacle Church 
in New York 



New York: 46 East 14TH Street 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 

Boston: 100 Purchase Street 



U 






WASHINGTON 




^^0072 



Copyright, 1898, 
By Thomas Y. Crowell & Company. 



np rfZz. 




DEO 9.^nm I 



typography by C. J. PETERS & SON, 
BOSTON. 






TO THE 

flagmen of Ci^ttstentiom, 

THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 

BY A MINISTER 

WHO ESTEEMS AND REVERES THEM. 



r. 



HOW IT CAME ABOUT 



Now that the talker has finished, let 
him tell you how he happened to begin. 
For more than ten years he was a layman. 
He has never recovered from it. Through 
all that period it never occurred to him 
that he should ever be a minister ; and his 
habit of looking at things from a layman's 
standpoint became so deeply ingrained, 
that even to this day he often forgets he 
is a preacher and finds himself still think- 
ing and feeling like a layman. He is 
more at home in a company of laymen 
than in a company of clergymen. Dur- 
ing the years in which he sat in the pew 
he, like all laymen, supposed he under- 
stood ministers, and was capable of judg- 
ing their work ; and, like many laymen, 
he was sometimes harsh in his judgments, 

vii 



viu How It Came About, 

and unsparing in his criticisms. On enter- 
ing the ministry he began to see things 
from another viewpoint. Mysteries once 
incomprehensible opened up in ways quite 
surprising. As a layman he had often 
wondered why so many preachers preached 
so poorly. As a preacher he began to 
marvel that preachers preach as well as 
they do. While an onlooker from the 
pew, the life of a minister seemed luxuri- 
ous and free from drudgery ; but in the 
pulpit it was borne in upon him that it 
is one thing to be a preacher of the Word, 
and quite another thing to be a hearer 
only. 

Throughout his ministry he has listened 
with amused and profitable interest to the 
comments upon clergymen which laymen 
are in the habit of making, and has heard 
again and again many of the opinions and 
estimates which he had formerly held and 
expressed. One touch of nature makes 
all laymen kin. The misconceptions of 
a minister's work, and the misinterpreta- 



How It Cmne About. ix 

tions of his conduct and speech, are often 
so kidicrous that it would seem incredi- 
ble that intelligent people should be guilty 
of them were they not abiding and incon- 
trovertible facts of current church history. 

As the years have gone on he has found 
the conviction growing in him that one 
of the root causes of ecclesiastical disturb- 
ances is the chasm existing between the 
pulpit and the pew. A widening knowl- 
edge of church life, and the critical study 
of church quarrels, have forced him to the 
conclusion that it is not total depravity 
so much as partial ignorance which wrecks 
so many pastorates and leaves so many 
churches stranded. As a rule, unpleas- 
antnesses in the Christian Church have 
sprung from very trifling matters, and in 
many cases there would have been no 
trouble had pastor and people known each 
other better. 

Being convinced from experience and 
observation that peace and power in the 
churches can be deepened and extended 



X Hozv It Came About, 

by bringing pastors and peoples closer 
together, he resolved to throw open the 
doors of his study and invite the whole 
Christian world to come in. For just such 
confidential talks as it was in his heart 
to give, no place seemed so appropriate 
as his study. The pulpit was out of the 
question. Many themes and many peo- 
ple cannot be taken into the pulpit, but 
the minister's study is roomy and hospi- 
table. In his library all ecclesiastical divi- 
sions and doctrinal differences sink into 
the background. Look at those shelves 
of books ! Calvinist and Arminian, Jes- 
uit and Puritan, Lutheran and Episcopa- 
lian, Baptist and Unitarian, Methodist and 
Presbyterian, heretical saints and orthodox 
martyrs, — all stand quietly together. A 
live preacher lives on them all. His peo- 
ple get them all in his sermons. There 
are at least two places on earth where 
denominational titles are lost sight of, and 
where ecclesiastical differences do not es- 
trange, — a hymn-book and a clergyman's 



Hozv It Came About. xi 

library. There is much talk nowadays 
about the desirability of Christian unity. 
It is comforting to believe that the Church 
is already one. Most of the differences 
which inflame and alarm do not go deeper 
than the skin. Christians are Christians, 
no matter what their denominational tag. 
Have you ever noticed that whenever 
Christians talk on vital themes they inva- 
riably slip into the same vocabulary and 
mood 1 The branches of Christendom dif- 
fer in polity and definition, but they are 
all alike in their aims and needs. This 
is why the study-door was opened so wide. 
But the door was not open for the ad- 
mission of ministers. In all his talks the 
author has spoken only to laymen. This 
book is for them. Its ambition is to help 
them. The talks must be judged by their 
aim. If the frailties and shortcomings of 
clergymen are touched but lightly, or studi- 
ously ignored, it is not because the author 
is ignorant of them, or because he thinks 
it sacrilegious to lay them bare, but be- 



xii How It Came About. 

cause ministerial delinquencies do not lie 
within the scope of his purpose. When 
he writes on the sins of clergymen it will 
require a larger book than this to hold 
what he has to say. If, on the other 
hand, he seems to bear down hard on the 
ignorance and perversity of laymen, it is 
not because he is blind to their excel- 
lences, or fails to measure the magnitude 
of their service, but because the aim of the 
talks is to call attention to those things 
in which laymen are most apt to go astray. 
The best people in the world, so the 
author thinks, are laymen. The tallest 
and sweetest saints whom it has been his 
privilege to know have been, not in the 
pulpit, but in the pew. There is probably 
no subject on which a true minister of 
Christ so loves to dwell in his thought as 
the sacrifices which laymen are making 
continually to advance God's kingdom. 
If the author had wished to tell what he 
thinks of the heroism and nobility and 
wisdom of the members of the churches, 



How It Came About. xiii 

his talks would have filled a dozen vol- 
umes instead of one. If his estimate of 
laymen is unwarrantably exalted, the two 
churches which it has been his privilege 
to serve must be held responsible. Both 
of these churches have given him, in gen- 
erous measure, all the things for which he 
pleads in the following pages. If the talks 
seem frank to the verge of bluntness, and 
if subjects often ostracized are discussed 
in language which is not minced, it is 
because the one who does the talking has 
been long convinced that laymen and cler- 
gymen have been and are too far apart ; 
and that when pastor and people become 
willing to sit down together and talk about 
themselves, their wishes and purposes, 
with straightforward simplicity and unre- 
strained candor, the Church of God will 
enter upon an era of increased usefulness 
and power. 



CONTENTS, 



PAGE 

I. The Unknown Man i 

II. The Maligned Man 9 

III. The Misunderstood Man 16 

IV. The Importance of Knowing Him . 24 
V. The Sermon 32 

VI. What is the Matter? 39 

VII. Who is to Blame? ....... 46 

VIII. Why Time is Needed 54 

IX. Vacation, and Why 61 

X. Objections to Vacations 6S 

XI. Money 75 

XII. Ministerial Liberty 83 

XIII. Liberty Defined '. 90 

XIV. Sympathy 97 

XV. Co-operation 104 

XVI. Considerateness iii 

XVII. Thoughtlessness 118 

XV 



xvi Contents. 

XVIII. Ways of Killing a Sermon 

XIX. Inspiring the Minister . . 

XX. Appreciating the Minister 

XXI. Criticising the Minister 

XXII. Securing a Minister . . 

XXIII. Dismissing a Minister . 

XXIV. The Minister's Wife . . 
XXV. The Mission of Laymen . 



PAGE 

146 

160 
167 



QUIET TALKS WITH EARNEST 
PEOPLE IN MY STUDY. 



The Unknown Mam 

Certainly, come in! I am delighted 
to see you. Be seated, please. 

And this is your first visit to a minis- 
ter's study ? I am surprised ! The world 
as seen from a clergyman's study window 
is worth looking at, I assure you. You 
must come often. 

You will pardon me, I hope, if I grow 
communicative, and even confidential. 
Your coming has so touched me that out 
of the abundance of my heart my mouth 
is sure to say things which I am not in 
the habit of saying in the pulpit. 

You laymen, excuse me, do not call 
on the minister often enough. You have 

I 



2 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

magnified the value of pastoral calling 
beyond reason. I wish that for the next 
few generations there might be a new 
emphasis on the *^ layman's" call. I have 
heard many church-members complain be- 
cause the pastor had not called on them. 
I have never heard many confess that 
they had neglected the pastor. I shall 
consider this late call on me as fruit 
meet for repentance. 

No one can look out upon the uni- 
versal church without saying, " Something 
is wrong." Of course that is nothing 
new. There has always been something 
wrong, and probably there always will be. 
But it is the business of Christians to 
keep prying into the roots of wrong 
things that they may devise methods of 
setting the wrong things right. Let us 
examine a few of the roots. 

The first thing which strikes one on 
even a hurried survey of the church is 
the widespread discontent. There are 
altogether too many dissatisfied parishes, 



The Unknown Man, 3 

and I am afraid there are just as 
many restless and hungry-hearted pastors. 
Church quarrels get into the papers with 
alarming frequency, and pastorates are 
distressingly short. Even where there is 
no noticeable friction, there is an appall- 
ing meagreness of energy and power. 
There is an immense difference between 
being well and not being ill. One may 
not know what health is, and yet never 
be sick. Many churches, not sick enough 
to quarrel with the minister, are, never- 
theless, debilitated below the point at 
which effective work becomes possible. 
The wrangling, obstreperous churches are 
not so saddening, I think, as the shrivelled 
and impotent ones, which have only vi- 
tality sufficient to save themselves from 
extinction, and not vigor enough to show 
the world what robust and conquering 
Christianity is. One of the roots of all 
our church troubles, I take it, is the fact 
that clergymen and laymen do not come 
close enough together. Were I asked to 



4 Qiciet Talks With Earnest People. 

give a recipe for lengthening pastorates 
and increasing the vitahty of the churches, 
I should say, '' Shorten the distance 
between the pulpit and the pew." Dis 
tance breeds misunderstandings. When 
pastor and people do not understand each 
other, the nerve of power and peace is 
severed. 

I cannot help feeling that Protestants 
have an inclination nowadays to hold 
themselves aloof from their leaders. The 
eagerness with which the saints seize the 
back seats at prayer-meeting is signifi* 
cant because illustrative. The chasm of 
vacant pews to be seen in most churches 
between pastor and people is the visible 
sign of a spiritual gulf which ought to be 
bridged. The evils of mediaeval priest- 
craft have electrified the laity into a state 
of chronic repulsion ; and the average 
Protestant seems to be afraid of being 
caught in the act of exhibiting too much 
reverence for a clergyman's office, or 
paying too much attention to what a 



The Unknozvn Man. 5 

clergyman says. The right to read and 
think for one's self is popularly construed 
to mean that everybody is as good a the- 
ologian as the minister. '' The preacher 
is no longer an oracle ! He has been 
hurled from his pedestal ! He is a falli- 
ble mortal, no wiser or better than the 
people to whom he preaches ! He labors 
under serious limitations, and has inbred 
and ineradicable biases, and therefore 
what he says must be taken with a grain 
of salt." The changes have been rung 
upon this strain until a multitude of pro- 
fessing Christians act upon the assump- 
tion that a preacher is to be endured 
but not heeded, criticised but not as- 
sisted, pitied and paid, but not honored 
and loved. 

But nothing is gained by toppling a 
man from his pedestal unless this brings 
him closer to us. The important thing 
m this world is not to hurl men from 
their pedestals, but to understand them. 
And notwithstanding all we have heard 



6 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

about the dissipation of the atmosphere 
of mystery in which the ^^man of God" 
was once enshrouded, it is safe to say 
that the minister of to-day is but little 
better known than he was centuries ago. 
Once he was lost in the seclusion of the 
cloister, now he is lost in the press of 
the crowd. It is as easy to lose sight of 
a man in the dust as in the clouds. Al- 
though the clergyman of to-day is a man 
mingling constantly with men, no other 
man in the community is so imperfectly 
understood. 

But you are not altogether to blame for 
not knowing him. You are busy, of 
course ; I know that. His work is differ- 
ent from yours. He does it in solitude. 
And he never tells you about himself. If 
a clergyman talks about himself he is put 
down as an egotist. If he mentions his 
work in conversation he is talking ^^shop.'' 
He cannot complain. He cannot protest 
against injustice. He cannot explain him- 
self or defend himself, or lay bare the 



TJie Unknown Man, 7 

secrets of his interior life ; for Sundays are 
few, and on those days he must tell the 
people not of himself, but of One whom 
to know is life eternal. 

The result is, the preacher is the un- 
known man of modern society. The 
world thinks it knows him, but it does 
not. The most that it says about him is 
erroneous. Dame Rumor repeats stories 
about his frailties and his idiosyncrasies, 
and jocose writers picture him in divers 
attitudes and colors, but he remains 
unknown. 

I have often wished that preachers had 
time to talk now and then to their con- 
gregations a little about themselves. It 
would make them less professional, and 
more human to their people. It is sin- 
gular no book has ever yet been written 
giving authentic glimpses of the ministe- 
rial world for the edification of laymen. 
Unnumbered volumes have been written 
by clergymen for the benefit of theolo- 
gical students, pointing out perils and 



8 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

burdens, and explaining methods and pro- 
cesses, and ministers are constantly tell- 
ing one another of their experiences and 
needs ; but little has been written or 
spoken for the purpose of letting laymen 
into the secrets and mysteries of minis- 
terial activity and being. And herein the 
whole church suffers loss. Knowledge is 
essential to sympathy, and sympathy is 
indispensable to power ; and power is the 
one thing which the church has been 
promised, and which it most conspicuously 
and lamentably lacks. We may expect 
a new Pentecost when laymen learn to 
put themselves into the minister's place. 
When we know each other better, some of 
the mists will roll away. 



The Maligned Mail. 9 



II. 

The Maligned Man. 

I WAS saying that the clergyman is the 
unknown man of modern society. Be- 
cause unknown he is mahgned. The 
world charges the clergyman with three 
cardinal sins, — laziness, covetousness, and 
cowardice. It suspects him of a half- 
dozen others, but it is sure of these three. 
To multitudes of men the minister is a 
gentleman of starched and elegant leisure, 
a lover of filthy lucre, a trimmer who cuts 
his discourses to fit his congregation. I 
suspect many Christians are not aware 
how vast are the areas of society in which 
this estimate is almost universally ac- 
cepted. 

That a clergyman should be considered 
a loafer is not strange. He does his work 
in solitude. Men see him as he rides in 



lO Qtiiet Talks With Earnest People, 

a carriage to marry a couple for a hand- 
some fee, or as he offers remarks at a 
funeral, or as he speaks in the pulpit, or 
as he sits in a rocking-chair discussing the 
weather with some member of his flock, 
all of which the average man feels himself 
capable of performing without effort or 
fatigue. All other men — the farmer, the 
mechanic, the merchant, the builder — do 
their work where they can be seen of men ; 
but the minister does his work in solitude. 
Not one of you ever saw a clergyman 
work. The harder he toils in secret, the 
more easily he preaches. This ease be- 
comes added proof that preaching is to 
him as easy as breathing, and that there- 
fore he does not work at all. His work, 
moreover, is mental. It is hard to con- 
vince hand workers that head workers 
really work. The perspiring farmer in 
the cornfield will not believe that the 
dainty artist at his easel beneath a tree 
is working. Nor can a mechanic readily 
believe that a man who reads books 



TJie Maligned Man. 1 1 

through the week and on Sunday exhorts 
people to be good has as hard a job as 
he has. It must needs be that to many 
men the clergyman should seem an idler. 

Shall I shock you when I say that the 
clergyman belongs to the laboring classes, 
and that no man has a longer day than 
he ? An eight or ten or even a twelve 
hour day would not be sufficient for his 
work. No mechanic in the country works 
as many hours a day as the faithful clergy- 
man. Brain work cannot be done in the 
streets, and timed by the town clock, but 
it is work. The hardest work done in this 
world is brain work. Labor cannot be 
measured by the beads of sweat on the 
forehead. Work cannot be estimated in 
hours. It must be computed by expen- 
diture of nervous energy, measured in 
ounces of vitality. The artist may pour 
out in a day more life on the canvas than 
the farmer on his cornfield. A man in 
writing a discourse can expend in three 
hours more nerve-force than a hodcarrier 



12 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

will expend in ten. In the higher moods 
of the mind, a single hour of creative work 
will leave a man sapless and limp. Never 
allow yourself to use the term '^laboring 
classes '' in referring to wage-earners. 
The expression is misleading, and perpetu- 
ates the ancient delusion that breaking 
down cells in the muscles is labor, while 
breaking down cells in the brain is play. 
Why should men who use their hands be 
considered laborers any more than teachers 
and doctors and lawyers and preachers 1 
But this brain work is not all. There is 
heart work. The sweat of the heart has 
more blood in it than the sweat of the 
brow. To ride to a funeral is easy ; but to 
bear daily the grief of wrecked homes — 
such labor bowed to the earth the Son of 
God himself. 

It is because the minister is counted an 
idler that the world is so sensitive con- 
cerning his salary. It nettles men to see 
a man paid for doing nothing. The size 
of a minister's salary is always a matter of 



The Maligned Man. 1 3 

concern to the entire community. And it 
is a saying repeated with rehsh that a 
minister always feels called of the Lord 
to labor in the field which offers the lar- 
gest financial returns. 

That men should say this is to be ex- 
pected. We always read others through 
ourselves. A man's heart is the lens 
through which he sees the world. The 
average man lives at the level of dollars 
and cents. How can he be expected to 
acknowledge that human nature can be 
swayed by motives higher than his own t 
A few facts are worth remembering. A 
clergyman has a divine right to compen- 
sation. He has, ordinarily, at least $ 1 5,- 
000 invested in his head ; and capital is 
entitled to some return. He is a laborer ; 
and, as a workman, he is worthy of his 
meat. The vast majority of clergymen 
are underpaid. No other men do so much 
work for so little money as they. Brain 
commands higher prices in every other 
profession than in the ministry. That 



14 Qiciet Talks With Earnest People, 

clergymen always rush to the church 
which pays best is false. A thousand 
clergymen in the United States can stand 
up and prove its falsity. The sneer which 
condemns a preacher for leaving a small 
church for a large one is both wicked and 
silly. A clergyman, unless providentially 
hindered, ought to accept the leadership 
of the largest church w^hich he is capable 
of serving. Every man ought to enter the 
largest door which Providence opens in his 
face. Why condemn a minister for follow- 
ing the dictates of common sense, and for 
doing what is clearly a duty } 

And is the average minister a trimmer } 
No ! When you hear men say so, deny 
it. It is your duty to deny it, unless 
you know the assertion to be true. No 
one can injure the reputation of a clergy- 
man without weakening the influence of 
the church universal, and hurting souls — 
it may be fatally. The world suffers 
more than you are apt to think every 
time a minister is vilified. ** Then I and 



The Maligned Man, 1 5 

you and all of us " fall down, and earth's 
base seems to be built on stubble. If 
yonr minister, perchance, happens to be 
a trimmer, then work unceasingly to get 
him out of the pulpit. Do not simply 
talk. In God's name act ! To laymen is 
committed no more important work than 
deposing ministers who are unworthy, 
and strengthening the arms of those who 
are true. There are more brave men in 
the pulpits of Christendom than in any 
army which ever followed a general to 
the mouths of the guns. To be sure, 
there is an occasional man who, like a 
coward, strikes only distant evils and sins 
which may be safely hit ; but even in the 
apostolic band there was a man whose 
name was Judas. 



1 6 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 



III. 

The Misunderstood Man, 

A POET has suggested that much might 
be gained could we see ourselves as 
others see us ; but the gain would be 
even greater if others could see us as 
we really are. It would from many a mis- 
conception free them. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes has called attention to the fact 
that in every conversation between two 
people there are six persons present. 
There is the first person as God sees him, 
as the second person sees him, and as he 
sees himself. There is the second person 
as God sees him, as the first person sees 
him, and as he sees himself. If this is 
true, there must be a regiment of minis- 
ters in every parish of a thousand people. 
Each member of the parish sees the 
minister at a different angle, and these 



Tlie Misunderstood Man, 1 7 

thousand imaginary men form a nimbus 
around the real minister, conceahng him 
from everybody but God alone. Just 
as Agassiz could form a fish from a single 
scale, so many persons have a fashion 
of constructing ministers from a splinter 
of a sermon, or a fragment of a course of 
action. An album containing a thousand 
portraits of himself as photographed on 
the minds of a thousand people would 
be an interesting volume for a pastor's 
library. It might humble him in the 
dust, but it would also bring consolation. 
If some of the portraits were black as 
Beelzebub, others would grace him with 
the glory of an archangel. 

It is a current saying that clergymen 
do not understand people. Let us turn 
it round, and say that people do not 
understand clergymen. Why cannot a 
minister understand people ? He works 
with human nature all the time. His 
library is stocked with books that analyze 
it, and discuss it in all its manifold varie- 



1 8 Qitiet Talks With Earnest People. 

ties and operations. He is brought into 
closer contact with men than any other 
man in the community. He touches men 
on more sides of their nature. He hears 
death-bed revelations. He knows secrets 
which are intrusted to none other. He 
hears confessions of guilt and crime 
which do not get into the papers. He 
knows closets with skeletons in them of 
whose existence the community does not 
dream. He has an eitti'ee into homes 
whose doors are shut to the world. He 
is Vv^ith the sick, and the remorseful, and 
the poor, and the heartbroken. He lis- 
tens to men's aspirations and doubts and 
fears, and complaints and anxieties, and 
loves and hates, and blasphemies and de- 
spairs. And yet he does not know 
human nature ! It makes me smile to 
hear a business man say, in a supercilious 
tone, that preachers do not know people. 
This business man knows several church- 
members who do not pay their debts, 
and therefore the guileless minister would 



The Mistindcrstood Man, 19 

be very much surprised, if he only knew 
how many wolves in sheep's clothing are 
masquerading under his very nose — as 
though the clergyman does not know 
more of the hypocrisies and inconsisten- 
cies and unworthinesses of professing 
Christians than any merchant in the 
town ! Ministers may seem innocent and 
naive^ but they know more of what is 
going on than the average man gives 
them credit for knowing. 

I suppose they are counted ignorant 
of the world because on Sunday they do 
not manifest that sort of omniscience 
which the daily press displays. But a 
w^ise clergyman, knowing that his people 
through the week have had their minds 
stained and marred by the base and dis- 
mal, endeavors on Sunday to fix their 
hearts on things above. His refusal to 
go into the puddle does not prove his 
ignorance of it. Or is it because minis- 
ters do not indulge in the common vices 
of .men ? A man may know what is in 



20 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

men, and yet not accompany them in their 
sinning. Every clergyman has in him all 
the passions and powers by whose wrong 
use men become scapegraces and villains. 

But this notion is overtopped in pre- 
posterousness by the idea that a clergy- 
man has a better chance to be good than 
anybody else. The opinion is quite gen- 
eral among laymen. They ground their 
conviction on the fact that a minister is 
obliged by his calling to move in good 
society. Men hide their vices and curb 
their tongues in his presence. He need 
not touch anything unclean. He lives 
in his study and in the pulpit, and into 
neither place can the devil make his way. 
So it seems to many a layman. Many 
men are obliged to do their work among 
profane and foul-mouthed companions. 
Multiplied incitements to evil solicit them 
on every side. It is not strange that 
such men should look upon the clergy- 
man as sheltered from the darts of the 
evil one, and as enjoying an immunity 



Tlie Mistmderstood Man. 2 1 

from temptation which is denied to all 
other mortals. 

A minister on a pedestal has little in- 
fluence over men. Unless he is in all 
points tempted like his brethren, he can- 
not be touched with the feeling of their 
infirmities. It is important, therefore, 
for laymen to remember that the battle 
of life is for all. Men may fight at dif- 
ferent levels ; but no matter w^here they 
stand, they are on a battlefield. Some 
sins are coarse and carnal, and others fine 
and subtle ; but all alike separate the soul 
from God. There is no hedge around 
the minister. He has all the temptations 
of other men, and some additional of his 
own. The devil has access to his study. 
He was in Luther's study when the re- 
former threw his inkstand at him. He 
can ascend the pulpit stairs. He often 
does. What a host of demons the clergy- 
man is obliged to meet and conquer ! 
What opportunities for him to be a dem- 
agogue, a coward, a mischief-maker ! 



22 Qiuet Talks With Earnest People. 

How easy to pose as a defender of the 
faith, and cast insinuations on his brother 
minister who reads the gospel with a dif- 
ferent emphasis ! How easy to be vain 
of a fine voice or a superb presence ! 
How easy to be envious of mxcn just a 
Httle ahead of him in power and fame ! 
How easy to be lazy, uncharitable, deceit- 
ful, domineering, autocratic, or peevish ! 
How easy to wilt under discourageraent ! 
How easy to commit any of the sins to 
which our frail humanity is prone ! The 
number of Christian ministers who in 
each generation have gone down the 
broad road while urging men to choose 
the narrow one is conclusive proof that 
clergymen, above all other men, need to 
put on the whole armor of God in order 
to stand against the wiles of the devil. 

The fact that the minister deals con- 
stantly with spiritual things is proof to 
the unthinking that saintship to him 
comes easy, whereas the constant han- 
dling of high ideas and moral truths is 



The Misiuidcrstood Man, 23 

a source of constant danger. Familiarity 
has a tendency to deaden sensibility ; and 
just as soldiers often become blasphe- 
mous on the battlefield, and undertakers 
sometimes come to look on death without 
a trace of awe, so a minister, unless he 
prays and watches, will have at last a 
heart unresponsive to the very truth 
which he is sent to teach. It is some- 
thing to be remembered always that the 
Scribes and Pharisees fell into a deeper 
ditch than did the publicans and harlots. 



24 Qitiet Talks With Earnest People. 



IV. 

The Importance of Knowing Him, 

Every layman believes that the minis- 
ter should know his people. Every cler- 
gyman believes that too. All through 
his seminary course the importance of 
knowing his people, their names, dispo- 
sitions, occupations, habits, and needs is 
dinned into him. Every minister who 
understands his business works constantly 
to establish a personal friendly relation 
between himself and his people. With- 
out this relation his preaching comes to 
naught. 

But it is equally important that a lay- 
man should know his pastor. It is not to 
be expected that the clergyman should go 
all the way. He cannot if he would. The 
distance between two souls is so great 
that while both together can bridge it, 



The Importance of Knowing Him. 25 

the bridging can be accomplished by 
neither one alone. If it is Christian and 
necessary for a minister to enter into the 
needs and experiences of his people, it is 
no less necessary and Christian that lay- 
men should enter into the life and labors 
of their pastor. It is important for the 
layman himself. If he does not know his 
pastor, he cannot love him. If he does 
not love him, he will not be moulded by 
him. Love is the only flame hot enough 
to render the soul plastic. For the min- 
ister's sake also it is essential that his 
people should know him. His work is 
the building of men. He cannot trans- 
form men who are not responsive to his 
touch. And thus if laymen fail to under- 
stand their pastor, his efforts are nullified, 
the power of the church is crippled, and 
the progress of God's kingdom checked. 

Let me suggest, then, brethren, that 
you get closer to the minister. Get as 
close to him as you can. In the church 
meetings get near him. The world con- 



26 Qinet Talks With Emmcst People, 

demns the clergy for poor speaking. The 
world forgets that the majority of min- 
isters are obliged to speak under con- 
ditions which render effective speaking 
impossible. The most expert operator 
cannot send a telegram if the wire is cut, 
nor can the greatest orator speak with 
power if separated from his audience. 
Cultivate, I beseech you, a love for the 
front pews. 

Get near him in your difficulties. The 
abuse of the confessional in the Roman 
Catholic Church has made Protestants 
shy of confession. But it should be 
borne in mind that it is the confessional, 
and not confession, against which Protes- 
tantism protests. The former is mis- 
chievous and dangerous, the latter is 
good for the soul. The confessional is 
built on a heaven-implanted instinct, — 
the instinct which prompts us to seek 
relief by sharing our sin or sorrow or 
perplexity with another. The institution 
would not have survived its monstrous 



TJie Importmtcc of Knowing Him. 27 

abuse had not the instinct been deep- 
seated and ineradicable. Compulsory con- 
fession is tyranny, but voluntary personal 
conference is rational and Scriptural. 
Why not use your pastor more t A half- 
hour's conversation with him may bring 
you more relief than a score of sermons. 
Every life has its doubts and perplexi- 
ties, its remorses and despondencies ; and 
many a Christian flounders in darkness 
for years rather than let his pastor know 
that he is floundering. Many difliculties 
and doubts vanish in the light of larger 
knowledge, and all burdens are lightened 
when told to a friend. Make the pastor 
your friend. 

Get close to him in his work. Seize 
his view-point. Grasp his plans. He 
will not command you, but he advises 
you. His advice ought to have in it 
something of the urgency and majesty of 
a command. Do not be afraid to obey 
him. Obedience is a virtue worth culti- 
vating. There is none greater or rarer. 



28 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

The mediaeval doctrine of priestly author- 
ity we Protestants have discarded, but it 
was based upon a truth. In the New 
Testament the minister is given a place 
which we are just now in danger of deny- 
ing him. 

If you are close enough to him, you 
will not allow men to rehearse in your 
presence the stock yarns about clergy- 
men which the world delights to repeat. 
Human nature is prone to act upon the 
principle, "From one learn all;" but never 
does it so act with such alacrity as when 
sitting in judgment upon ministers. A 
minister marries a rich wife, and almost 
immediately discovers that his throat is 
weak. Whereupon it becomes an adage 
that clergymen, like other men, loaf when 
they can. The son of a clergyman de- 
generates into a scapegrace ; and in time 
that one boy becomes in the world's ears 
a million boys, and the lying remark that 
a minister's children are always the worst 
in the community hardens into im'perish- 



Tlie Importance of Knowing Him, 29 

able tradition. An absent-minded, unprac- 
tical clerical bookworm fails to measure 
the value of money or the nature of 
men, and a story illustrative of the folly 
of the simpleton is published from Dan 
to Beersheba as an example of the nin- 
nies and theorizers who have set them- 
selves up as prophets in Israel. An 
indolent Reverend preaches old sermons, 
and jokes about his barrel which he 
keeps turning over ; and his stupid joke 
is told wherever the gospel is preached, 
not so much as a memorial of him as a 
condemnation of the whole race of preach- 
ers. A clergyman is at the mercy of 
the community. If church-members do 
not defend him, who will } His reputa- 
tion lies all exposed, and any one can 
injure it who chooses. A clergyman 
with a reputation spotted is impotent. 
His reputation is as important as his 
character. Other men can dispense with 
reputation, and do their work success- 
fully. To the clergyman both reputa- 



30 Quiet Talks With Earliest People, 

tion and character are indispensable. The 
farmer can sell his pigs and oats no mat- 
ter what his neighbors say of him. The 
shrewd merchant can amass a fortune, 
even though a reputed libertine. The 
able lawyer can command an extensive 
practice, however rumor may busy her- 
self with his name. But a clergyman 
cannot do his work if on his reputation 
there is a single stain. God is satisfied 
with character alone, but men are not. 
They demand reputation too. No mat- 
ter how wise a clergyman may be, he 
can have little influence if supposed to 
be a dunce. No matter how saintly, his 
words are without weight if men suspect 
his piety. His influence is conditioned 
on the confidence and love of those to 
whom he ministers. To lie about him 
is to shut men's hearts against him. It 
was not from idle curiosity that Jesus 
asked the question, " Whom do men say 
that I am .^ " His influence over men 
depended not simply on what he was, 



The Importance of Knowing Him. 3 1 

but on men's estimate of him. And as 
soon as he found a man whose concep- 
tion of him was adequate and true, he 
mounted at once into a great joy, and 
saw in vision a church against which the 
gates of Hades could not prevail. 



32 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 



V. 

The Sermon. 

I THINK I heard one of you say a little 
while ago that in your opinion the preach- 
ing of to-day does not come up to the 
demands of the times. I knew you would 
say that, and I agree with you. A great 
many ministers are just as certain of that 
as you are. It is not enough to say, as is 
often done, that the preaching of to-day is 
far superior to that of any preceding age. 
As a statement this is true, but as an ar- 
gument it is fallacious. It does not cover 
the case. The vital question is. Has 
preaching in the last half century kept 
pace with the general advance in culture } 
And to this question the answer, I think, 
must be. No. That the average preach- 
ing in America to-day is far below the 
legitimate demand of the pews is, to my 



TJie Sermon. 33 

mind, a fact which cannot be successfully 
evaded. 

You laymen, I imagine, are generally 
agreed that there is something wrong with 
the sermon. You find it difficult to say 
just what is lacking, but of the lack you 
are altogether certain. You do not agree 
among yourselves when you offer expla- 
nations, and I am afraid many of your ex- 
planations will not bear analysis. Some 
of you say that the cause of all the trouble 
is laziness, others say stupidity, others say 
profundity, others say other-worldliness, 
while still others of you confess that you 
are all at sea, and do not know how to 
diagnose a disease so complicated and dis- 
tressing. You are sure of one thing, and 
that is that the culprit is the preacher. 

It must be confessed that there are 
sluggards in the pulpit. But there would 
not be so many if the laymen did their 
duty, and drove these sluggards out. 
There is also an occasional minister who 
has not many convolutions in the gray 



34 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

matter of the brain. But these men con- 
stitute so small a minority of the modern 
army of preachers that we may drop them 
from our discussion, and pass on to con- 
sider the alleged sin of preaching sermons 
too profound. 

When laymen fail to take an interest in 
their pastor's sermons, and try to follow 
his arguments in vain, they are some- 
times generous enough to attribute their 
failure to their own stupidity and their 
pastor's extraordinary powers of thinking. 
It is comforting to many laymen to feel 
that their pastor's sermons are profound, 
even though the sermons fail to give them 
either light or strength. And occasionally 
a clergyman, doomed by his limitations to 
preach to a drowsy dozen, consoles him- 
self with the delusion that it is nothing 
but the profundity of his thought which 
prevents the common people from listen- 
ing to him gladly. 

But no sermon ever fails because of 
its depth. The deep preachers whom 



The Sermon, 35 

nobody cares to hear are not deep at all. 
He is a shallow man who, commissioned 
to bear a message to the people, fails to 
speak that message in a language which 
the people can understand. A man ca- 
pable of keen thought sees at once that it 
is his business to preach sermons which 
will feed and build up the men to whom 
he speaks. A preacher only dimly under- 
stood is no preacher at all. It is an 
awful condemnation on a preacher to say 
that his sermon is above the comprehen- 
sion of the congregation to which it is 
delivered. No minister has ever yet been 
hampered by excessive profundity of 
thought. Many, however, have been 
handicapped by ignorance in the use of 
words. It is not excessive thought, but 
defective language, which puts people to 
sleep, and empties the pews. The plain- 
est congregation can take in the greatest 
thoughts which the brainiest thinker can 
clothe in words. The sublimest concep- 
tions can be expressed in homely sen- 



'^6 Qtciet Talks With Earnest People, 

tences. The two profoundest preachers 
whom America has yet produced, Henry 
Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks, were 
also the simplest in language, and the 
most easily understood. 

Simplicity is one of the marks of great- 
ness. So it has been from the beginning. 
Jesus of Nazareth, whose eyes pierced the 
depths, spoke always in familiar words, 
and never did he rise higher than when 
talking to an unlettered woman who gave 
him a drink at the well. What is taken 
for profundity of thought in the pulpit is 
often only technicality of language. The 
simplest thoughts may become obscure 
when couched in language which is 
cloudy. It is the misfortune of min- 
isters that throughout their seminary 
course they read almost exclusively 
heavily Latinized English, and become 
addicted to the use of the dialect of 
criticism and the patois of philosophy. 
Unconsciously to himself a clergyman 
often drops the language of the home 



The Sermon. 37 

and the street, and speaks the language 
of the schools. Unless he keeps a sharp 
and constant eye upon his language, and 
reads with care the most human novelists 
and sweetest poets, he will find himself 
preaching in some other language than 
that wherein his congregation were born. 
There are no Pentecostal miracles unless 
preacher and people speak the same lan- 
guage. You are to be pitied, brethren, 
if your preacher preaches to you in the 
technical vocabulary of modern science 
or the cold and abstract phrases of meta- 
physics. 

Nor are you correct when you say 
preachers are too doctrinal. Many are 
not doctrinal enough. It is doctrine 
which a preacher is ordained to preach. 
If he ceases to be doctrinal, his occupa- 
tion is gone. The great doctrines of the 
Christian faith — such as the fatherhood 
of God, the deity of Christ, the presence 
and power of the Holy Spirit, the brother- 
hood of man, the forgiveness of sins, the 



38 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

judgment day, the life eternal — cannot 
be preached too frequently. Congrega- 
tions fed on doctrines such as these have 
red blood and endurance. All others are 
scrawny and impotent. When you cry 
out against doctrinal preaching, you are 
using the wrong adjective. You mean to 
say that you do not like preaching which 
is metaphysical or speculative or scholas- 
tic. You have no taste for theories. 
You love truth. You are weary of 
speculations. You are hungry for facts. 
You do not want the guesses of men, but 
the doctrines of Jesus. You desire not 
only the sky ends but the earth ends of 
the gospel. And you ought to have 
them. Blessed are you if you have in 
your pulpit a man who can breathe easily 
the difficult air of the steep mountain-tops 
of spiritual experience, and who can tell 
you on the Lord's Day, in the sweet, fa- 
miliar words of home, the things which 
he has seen and heard. 



lV//a^ Is tJic Matter? 39 



VI. 

What Is The Matter? 

No, I have no objection to telling you 
what I conceive to be the radical defect 
in much of the preaching of our time. It 
is lack of spiritual passion. The tone of 
authority is faint. Too much of the preach- 
ing is like that of the Scribes. Clergymen 
are numerous, but prophets are few. 

Here lies the trouble. Only a prophet 
can achieve genuine success in these hur- 
ried and fascinating days. Time was when 
a scholar could do it. When books were 
expensive, and locked up in the libraries 
of the elite, a man versed in book-lore could 
find a Sunday audience eager to listen to 
the information which he was willing to 
impart. Those days are gone. Before the 
rise of the daily paper, the preacher could 
be an editor, and make his sermons running 



40 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

commentaries on current events. That 
sort of preaching was once counted suc- 
cessful. It is a failure now. Before the 
multiplication of lecture platforms and 
music-halls and art-galleries, and other 
sources of intellectual entertainment and 
aesthetic gratification, fine music from the 
organ loft, and exquisite essays from the 
pulpit, seemed to satisfy all reasonable 
demands. But music, while it may still 
have charms to soothe the savage breast, 
is not conspicuously successful in attract- 
ing non-church-goers into the house of God. 
And much of the finest literary work dis- 
played at present in American pulpits 
seems to be hopelessly lost on this un- 
kempt and stiff-necked generation. Even 
the pulpit reformer does not w^ear his 
crown long. He has had his day, like the 
editor preacher and the rest. By striking 
one special evil hard, he may cause the 
world to resound for a season with the 
echoes of his blows, and may even succeed 
in chipping off a fragment of some false 



What Is The Matter? 41 

custom or established wrong ; but unless 
a preacher is a great deal more than a 
reformer, he cannot long hold the attention 
of an intelligent congregation, or hope to 
build an enduring Christian church. In 
short, the poor preacher has been ousted 
from the snug position of editor, lecturer, 
essayist, reformer; and there is nothing- 
left him now but the arduous vocation of 
a prophet. 

And this has been his true place from 
the beginning. His other positions were 
either usurped or thrust upon him by the 
exigencies of the times. The printing- 
press has pushed him up at last into his 
proper sphere. If he attempts now to 
compete with other men in their fields of 
labor, he invites the failure which he 
deserves. The position of a minister is 
unique. His mission is momentous. His 
work, while fitting into the labors of all 
other servants of the Lord, is different 
from theirs. The moment he forsakes 
the task appointed him, and attempts to 



42 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

share the work and honors of other men, 
swift retribution follows in his track. 
Woe to the preacher who in these mod- 
ern days shirks the wrestlings and agonies 
of the prophet, and attempts to perform 
the duties assigned to others ! 

And yet this is the very thing which 
many preachers are doing. Notwithstand- 
ing the discussion ad nauseam through 
the week in the daily press of every hap- 
pening and event, there are preachers who 
have the temerity to expect people to 
come to the church on the Lord's Day to 
hear the old newspaper straw threshed over 
again. And notwithstanding every cen- 
tre-table groans with periodicals and mag- 
azines edited with consummate ability, and 
filled with articles written in many cases 
by the pen of genius, there are ministers 
who dabble on the Lord's Day in literary 
discussion and philosophical speculation, 
and then wonder why the blessing of the 
Almighty does not rest upon their labors. 
There is an itch abroad just now to work 



What Is The Matter? 43 

reforms. Everything is being overhauled, 
from systems of theology to boards of 
aldermen. The social order is rotten, the 
industrial system is accursed, the ecclesi- 
astical regime is ripe for burning — so men 
assert. There is a hubbub of discordant 
voices, each voice screaming out a pana- 
cea, and promising the golden age ; and 
in this fury for readjustment and recon- 
struction, too many pulpits, I am inclined 
to think, waste their time and strength. 
It is a proof of Christ's matchless great- 
ness that he stood in the presence of the 
Roman empire and never struck it. His 
work was to strike the heart. By strik- 
ing the hearts of peasants, he overturned 
the empire. He says to his heralds, 
"Follow me! " 

Unless a sermon is different from all 
other forms of address, the world to-day 
does not care to hear it. If tired men 
and women are to be expected to attend 
public worship Sunday morning, the at- 
mosphere of the house of God must be 



44 Qtdet Talks With Earnest People. 

made different from that which these 
people breathe through the week. The 
late R. H. Hutton, in one of his essays, 
says that Walter Bagehot once asked him 
to hear one of the afternoon sermons 
of the chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, Fred- 
erick D. Maurice. Bagehot assured Hut- 
ton that he would feel that something 
different went on there from that which 
went on in an ordinary church or chapel 
service, that there was a sense of ^* some- 
thing religious " in the air which was 
not to be found elsewhere. Bagehot's 
word was fulfilled. Hutton heard and saw 
and felt that day things which lived in 
his memory through life. He heard a 
prophet. Maurice spoke for God. The 
intense and thrilling tones, the pathetic 
emphasis, the passionate trust, the burn- 
ing exultation, the atmosphere of reve- 
rence and devotion, awed and subdued the 
worshippers. The church became indeed 
a holy place. The words of the service 
seemed put into the preacher's mouth, 



What is the Matter? 45 

"while ne, with his whole soul bent on 
their wonderful drift, uttered them as an 
awe-struck but thankful envoy tells the 
tale of danger and deliverance." 

It is this " something religious " which 
one misses in too many of our American 
churches and in too much of our modern 
preaching. Bright things, true things, 
helpful things, are said in abundance, but 
the spiritual passion is lacking. The ser- 
vice smacks of time and not of eternity. 
The atmosphere of the sermon is not 
that of Mount Sinai or Mount Calvary, 
but that of the professor's room or the 
sanctum of the editor. The intellect is 
instructed, the emotions are touched, but 
the conscience is not stirred, nor is the 
will compelled to appear before the judg- 
ment throne and render its decision. The 
old tone of the '' Thus saith the Lord " 
of the Hebrew prophets is lacking. Men 
are everywhere hungering and waiting for 
it, but in many churches they have thus 
far waited for it in vain. 



46 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 



VII. 

Who Is To Blame? 

Nor is the minister altogether to blame. 
He is the victim of circumstances and 
the Zeitgeist and — laymen. The time 
was when people lived largely in villages. 
In those rural days the minister was 
preacher and teacher, and pastor and ad- 
ministrator, and counsellor and general 
public servant. The world to-day lives 
largely in cities, and it is the carrying of 
rural traditions into city conditions which 
is in part responsible for the present 
dearth of strong preaching. It is the old, 
old story of laying aside the command- 
ment of God and holding the tradition 
of men. 

In village days every man was expected 
to be able to do a dozen different things, 
and the preacher was not an exception to 



Who Is To Blame ? 47 

the rule. The farmer understood a dozen 
different trades, and why should not a 
clergyman fill a dozen different positions ? 
But 

New occasions teach new duties ; 
Time makes ancient good uncouth. 

The village has developed into a city, 
and all the problems have changed. The 
process of specialization has gone steadily 
forward, by which each man is given 
some one specific thing to do. Each de- 
partment of work is divided and subdi- 
vided indefinitely, thus securing greater 
concentration and an increase of effi- 
ciency. The expert lawyer masters only 
one province of law, the expert physi- 
cian confines himself to one class of dis- 
eases, the expert editor writes on only 
one line of subjects, the expert teacher 
teaches only the fragment of one branch 
of knowledge ; but the minister is still 
expected to preach, and at the same time 
do a hundred other things. The work 
connected with the average city church 



48 Qiciet Talks With Earnest People, 

is sufficient to fill the time and exhaust 
the energy of several men, but in the 
majority of cases the minister is left to 
bear all the burdens alone. He must be 
the director of the church's manifold 
activities ; he must make pastoral calls, 
after the fashion of his country ancestor ; 
he must be public servant, answering let- 
ters innumerable, speaking at banquets, 
serving on committees, presiding at meet- 
ings, acting as director or trustee of col- 
leges and societies, orating at anniver- 
saries, pushing forward lagging reforms, 
encouraging numberless enterprises ; and 
then, fagged in body and jaded in mind, 
he goes into the pulpit to preach ! And 
you laymen — some of you — wonder why 
preachers preach no better than they do ! 
The wonder is that we can preach at all. 
The average preacher is simply sapped 
and overwhelmed by the avalanche of 
demands which the modern world makes 
upon him. 

The spirit of the age — Matthew Ar- 



Who Is To Blame? 49 

nold's Zeitgeist — comes in to make mat- 
ters still worse. A mania for organiza- 
tion has seized the world. The distemper 
has penetrated the life of the churches. 
The average church boasts more societies 
and meetings than an industrious rose- 
bush displays roses in June. In this fury 
for organization, the life of many a church 
is being ruthlessly dissipated. So much 
time and energy are expended in keeping 
the ponderous and complex machinery in 
motion that healthy Christian life is sac- 
rificed, and effective work becomes well- 
nigh impossible. The church suffers, the 
home suffers, weary mortals suffer — es- 
pecially the minister. He finds himself 
the business manager of a large concern. 
He must keep his eye on all sorts of so- 
cieties, clubs, and guilds. He must attend 
the meetings of these at stated intervals 
or be suspicioned of lukewarmness in 
the Master's cause. The modern church 
may win applause by multiplying its 
agencies for serving men, but all such 



50 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

apparent progress is dearly paid for when 
secured at the expense of the preacher. 
A boys' brigade drill or a soup-kitchen or 
a gymnasium will never do the work of 
a searching and inspiring sermon. The 
word of the Lord coming hot and strong 
from prophetic lips is the one thing 
which the church can never dispense 
with without forfeiting her life. Any- 
thing — no matter how excellent in itself 
— will in the long run, if it diminishes 
the power of the preacher, cripple the 
efficiency and retard the progress of 
the church. It is not by philanthropic 
agencies nor the creation of new societies, 
but by the " foolishness of preaching," 
that the world is to be redeemed. 

Therefore, brethren, guard your min- 
ister with all diligence, for out of his 
heart proceeds the word of life. If you 
convert him into an errand-boy or a pack- 
horse, you not only kill him, but you check 
the progress of the kingdom. If you per- 
mit him to fritter away his time on or- 



Who Is To Blame? 51 

ganizations, and squander his strength in 
administration, he cannot speak to you on 
the Lord's Day with an energy that will 
stir you, and with a knowledge that will 
build you up. There is nothing more pa- 
thetic in the religious history of America 
than the cruel way in which ministers are 
sacrificed to the ignorance and thought- 
lessness of Christians. One layman by 
himself is not cruel ; but five hundred or 
a thousand laymen, when banded together 
in a Christian church, can do things which 
a savage would blush at. They can sacri- 
fice without compunction the health and 
growth and domestic life and usefulness 
of their pastor, and finally leave him a 
wreck. Much is said about the dead line, 
and clergymen are roundly condemned for 
reaching it. A minister must inevitably 
reach it, and early too, if he does not have 
sufficient will-power to resist with dogged 
pertinacity and martyr-like heroism the 
encroachments on his time and energy 
which good-hearted but inconsiderate peo- 



52 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

pie are sure to make. Many a faithfm 
servant of the Lord has in early life, in 
order to meet the voracious demands of 
his parish, cut short his hours for study 
and for prayer, and then been subjected 
to the galling humiliation later on of 
hearing from the lips of the very per- 
sons whose foolishness had undone him, 
the damning assertion, '^ He is a very 
good man, but he does not hold the 
people ! " 

Let your mxinister preach. When he 
tells you what hours he needs for study, 
let him have them. If he does not call 
so frequently as his predecessor, say noth- 
ing. Measure him not by the number of 
door-bells he rings, but by the impulse he 
gives the community toward God. When 
he is absent from some occasion which 
you wished might have been graced by 
his presence, do not complain or con- 
demn. When he declines to say ^^yes" 
to your every invitation, remember that 
you are only one of a thousand persons 



Who Is To Blame? 53 

who have a claim on him, and that min- 
isters have rights which laymen ought 
to respect. When ministers do less they 
will do better, and when churches demand 
less they will receive more. 



54 Qtiiet Talks With Earnest People. 



VIII. 

Why Time Is Needed. 

I KNOW how a layman looks at it. He 
thinks that a minister can begin Monday 
morning to write his sermons, and can 
write straight on till Saturday night. 
With a clean sweep of six long days at 
his disposal, what more can a reasonable 
man demand ? But it should be remem- 
bered that according to God's law a man 
must drop his work one day in seven. 
The clergyman who does not do this pays 
the penalty like any other transgressor of 
the law. Moreover, fev/ clergymen have 
more than their mornings in their study. 
The afternoons are filled with parish 
duties, and the evenings with social func- 
tions and religious meetings. Thus the 
vast week dwindles down to five short 
mornings in which two sermons must be 



Why Time Is Needed. 5 5 

prepared. And as if even this were too 
much, frequently a funeral or some other 
imperative call steals away one of these 
five precious mornings. 

Within these narrow hours what tre- 
mendous work must be done ! It is a 
popular notion that the preacher's hardest 
work is the writing of his sermons. His 
most arduous labor is preparing, not his 
sermons, but himself. Any one can write 
down a sermon after he has the sermon 
in him ; but to get one's soul into that 
mood in which sermons blossom, to lift 
one's self to those high altitudes at which 
the word of God is audible, ah, there's 
the rub ! What study ! What meditation ! 
What prayer ! A sermon is not a thing 
that can be dashed off at any moment 
and without heart-strain. A sermon 
grows. Growth requires time. A ser- 
mon eats up the life-blood of a man. To 
keep the fountains of his life from run- 
ning dry is the minister's most critical 
problem. He must be an indefatigable 



56 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

worker. Intellectual treasures from every 
quarter must be swept into his mind by 
reading, wide and constant. He must be 
a student. He must dig deep in the 
mines of thought, and wrestle with the 
problems which distress the age and 
the ages. He must meditate. He must 
have time to keep still that great thoughts 
may take shape in him, that opinions may 
crystallize into convictions, and that dim 
truths may become clear. He must pray. 
He must continue long in prayer. 

No man can pray in a hurry, or medi- 
tate in haste, or study with a hundred 
duties standing at the door and shouting 
at him. But the modern preacher has 
little time. He goes through the week on 
a hop, skip, and jump. He is in a constant 
flurry to meet his next engagement. He 
is a Martha busied about many things. 
The better part has been taken from him. 
A thousand odds and ends of parish work 
keep him in a frenzy of activity, which 
saps the springs of intellectual energy and 
spiritual life. 



Why Time Is Needed. 57 

Brethren, we have now reached the root 
of one of the great problems of our day. 
The various distressing pulpit phenomena, 
which we all lament, and whose correction 
seems to be beyond our skill, can nearly 
all be traced, I think, to the crowded and 
feverish life which a modern minister is 
obliged to live. 

It is lack of time which drives so many 
preachers to palm off editorials as ser- 
mons. There is a vast difference between 
an editorial and a sermon. The former is 
an opinion, a comment, a discussion of 
a problem. It may be written without 
emotion, and oftentimes in haste. The 
sermon, like a poem, is a creation of 
the spirit, and comes into existence only 
through an experience which melts and 
transfigures the heart. Editorials may be 
written in the street ; sermons come to 
the soul only at high levels. The minister 
must, like Moses, go up into the mountain 
alone. 

It is lack of time which is cutting pas- 



58 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

torates short. Preaching becomes thin, 
and laymen rebel. Preaching is thin be- 
cause preachers are thin. Preachers are 
worn thin by endless activity. A man, to 
keep intellectually robust and spiritually 
rich, must have leisure for contemplation 
and wide study. Pastorates are becoming 
short, not because preachers are lazy, but 
because they are so busy in doing things 
that they preach themselves empty in 
three or four years. Many a minister's 
lamp goes out simply because he has no 
time to supply himself with oil. 

It is lack of time which is partly re- 
sponsible for the increased demand for 
evangelists, and for the numerous cheap 
devices adopted by preachers for whee- 
dling men into church attendance. If 
preachers do not have time to read great 
books and assimilate great ideas, it is not 
surprising they should fall back on pic- 
tures and choirs, and call in as often as 
possible an outsider to lighten the drudg- 
ery of their sermonic work. The increased 



Why Time Is Needed. 59 

dependence on travelling preachers is, in 
my judgment, one of the most ominous 
and deplorable signs of the times. 

And how shall we account for the ab- 
sence of that fire without which preach- 
ing is vain ? A sermon is nothing unless 
touched with emotion. Emotion cannot 
be manufactured. It is the result of med- 
itation. The Psalmist says, *^ While I 
mused, the fire burned." Without mus- 
ing there is no burning. James Russell 
Lowell, in one of his letters, says, 
" My brain requires a long brooding-time 
ere it can hatch anything. As soon as 
the life comes into the thing, it is quick 
enough in chipping the shell." From 
London he wrote to a friend, '^ I am 
piecemealed here with so many things to 
do that I cannot get a moment to brood 
over anything as it must be brooded over 
if it is to have wings. It is as if a sitting 
hen should have to mind the door-bell." 
That is the experience of the preacher. 
He is piecemealed. He is the victim 



6o Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

of the door-bell. He cannot hatch his 
thoughts fairly out as he goes along. 
Little opportunity is given his nature 
to kindle into flame. 

If preachers are to speak for God they 
must be given time to find out what God 
says. The words of John the Baptist 
rolled out upon his hearers like molten 
lava because he had brooded so long over 
the soul's need and God's will that when 
he emerged from the desert there was a 
fire burning in the marrow of his bones. 
Jesus in the quiet of Nazareth meditated 
and mused through the years until he was 
caught up by a spirit which carried him 
from the shop to the cross. No wonder 
he spoke as one having authority, and 
that men wondered at the words of grace 
which proceeded out of his mouth. And 
throughout his short public life he again 
and again turned his back on men in 
order to be alone. 



Vacation^ arid Why. 6 1 



IX. 

Vacation, and Why, 

A VACATION for a minister is not a 
luxury, but a necessity. Of course a man 
may preach every Sunday for years ; but 
if a man is to preach at his best, he must 
have annual periods of rest. If through 
mistaken zeal a clergyman declines to 
take a vacation, his church should stoutly 
insist on his obeying the laws of psychi- 
cal health. If through carelessness or 
ignorance a church fails to provide for 
an annual vacation, the minister should 
take it anyhow. No servant of the Lord 
should ever allow himself to be robbed by 
any company of men of the conditions 
essential to largest usefulness and power. 

A vacation is as necessary for the rural 
clergyman as for his brother in the city, 
but for different reasons. The village 



62 Qitiet Talks With Earnest People. 

deadens, the city exhausts. The foe of 
the rural mmister is rust ; the enemy of 
the city minister is mental and spiritual 
dissipation. A thousand influences play 
on the minister in the city to keep him 
alive. He is in danger of dying of excess 
of life. In the hamlet the minister is 
himself the fountain of life. He is the 
magnetic battery from which every enter- 
prise must be charged. His mission is 
to quicken and arouse. But in order to 
stimulate others, one must himself be 
stimulated. Every village pastor should, 
if possible, spend at least one month of 
every year away from his parish. His 
people ought to insist on his doing this. 
He should make an annual pilgrimage 
to some intellectual centre. He will 
bring back in new impressions and fresh 
ideas more than enough to compensate 
the community a hundredfold for all that 
his vacation has cost. Who can walk 
through the drowsy streets of the ordi- 
nary village without appreciating the mag- 



Vacation^ and Why, 63 

nitude of the task laid upon the country 
parson of keeping enthusiasm intense and 
thought-horizons wide ? 

The city pastor must have a vacation 
to keep his nature from wearing thin. 
The endless round of engagements, the 
enormous correspondence, the awful bur- 
den of poverty and woe, the constant 
drain on the centres of vitality, render 
unceasing work dangerous, if not fatal. 
Even if a man were physically strong 
enough to stride through the nionths 
without a pause, the nature of the mind is 
such that unceasing sermonic activity is 
fatal to highest pulpit power. A preacher 
is a teacher. A teacher's worth is meas- 
ured by his ability to inspire. Inspiration 
is conditioned on vitality and vigor of the 
creative faculties of the mind. A preacher 
must create impulse. A jaded preacher is 
no preacher at all. The man in the pulpit 
must give forth life. The more life he 
radiates, the greater his service to the 
world. Truth must in him become incar- 



64 Qidet Talks With Earnest People. 

Bate, and burn with a flame which fasci- 
nates and transforms. No man can teach 
even language or science with highest 
efficiency straight through all the months 
of the year. Universities make no mis- 
take in granting professors long annual 
vacations, and in giving them one com- 
plete year in seven. Without opportuni- 
ties to recuperate and blossom, the teacher 
degenerates into a hack, a machine, a 
pedant. Much more necessary is periodic 
rest to the man who deals, not simply 
with the intellect, but with the affections 
and the will. To cleanse and stir life at 
its fountain-head requires a man intensely 
human, and in every fibre of his soul alive. 
Human nerves are not steel. If always 
stretched, they deteriorate or break. A 
preacher must be a thinker. He ought 
to think closely, consecutively, accurately. 
Only a fresh mind thinks truly. A fagged 
mind cannot be trusted. A wearied 
preacher tires his congregation. He does 
worse, — he misleads. He does not see 



Vacatiofiy and Why, 65 

things in their right relations, and cannot 
present them in their true proportions. A 
man may exhort or retail anecdotes ever- 
lastingly, but that is not preaching. 

More than the preacher's intellect is 
in danger. His spiritual life is at stake. 
It is possible to work for God until all 
sense of God is lost. An overworked 
preacher finds himself asking with Pon- 
tius Pilate, " What is truth 1 " The 
eclipses of faith, alarmingly frequent in 
the ministry, are largely the result of 
overwork. A clergyman must get away 
occasionally from the Bible. He must 
touch God in the sea and sky and woods. 
He must listen, not always to Hebrew 
prophets, but sometimes to American 
frogs and katydids and birds. He must 
drop the idea of saving others, and be 
still that God may save him. In the 
months of work he must be self-assertive. 
His aim is to impress men. He hurls 
himself upon them. He looks for results. 
This mood, if never broken, becomes de- 



66 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

structive of the higher life of the soul. 
There is nothing more pathetic than 
the degeneration which often goes on 
in the character of men ordained to 
preach the gospel. As the years go on 
the temper loses its sweetness, the dis- 
position becomes autocratic or peevish, 
the mind is sicklied o'er with a morbid 
-cast of thought, the very structure of 
the soul seems in some cases to crumble 
into hopeless decay. Many a minister, 
whose head is full of foolish fears and 
Avhose sermons are weighted with morbid 
fancies, would be born again if he could 
spend a few months under the trees or 
on the sea. Anything which will widen 
the minister s outlook, elevate his ideals, 
cool the fever of his nerves, quicken his 
impulses, and restore the balance of his 
judgment, ought to be sought after by a 
congregation as rubies and fine gold. 

Indeed, it is for the sake of the people 
rather than for the sake of the preacher 
that a vacation is necessary. A church 



Vacatio7z, and Why, 6y 

whose pastor takes no vacation is of all 
churches most miserable. It does a 
church good to escape occasionally from 
the man who is its head. It is not best 
for a congregation to listen continuously 
to the same man, no matter how wise or 
good he may be. It is of vast advantage 
for laymen to sit at the feet of men 
who see truth at different angles, and 
who enter hearts by different avenues of 
approach. A voice, no matter how sweet, 
loses its edge if heard too often, and 
fails to reach the heart as a voice does 
whose accent is fresh, and whose intona- 
tions have in them the charm of un- 
familiar music. A church is roused to 
new intellectual alertness, and lifted to 
higher levels of spiritual vision, by listen- 
ing now and then to voices that are 
new. For his people's sake, as well as 
for his own, no minister can afford to 
stand in his pulpit every Sunday in the 
year. 



68 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 



X. 

Objections to Vacations. 

I THINK one of you remarked a little 
while ago that the devil never takes a 
vacation. The tone in which you said 
it compelled an inference and outlined 
an argument. But the argument rests 
on two erroneous suppositions. It is not 
true, as is sometimes assumed, that a 
clergyman is under obligation to follow 
the example of the devil, nor is it true 
that a community is completely at the 
mercy of his Satanic majesty the moment 
the minister goes out of town. If the 
devil can in one month undo all the work 
which the minister has done in eleven 
months, the loss is not so great as you 
imagine. Such work as that ought to 
be done over again. It is only when 
men build of hay and stubble that their 



Objections to Vacations, 69 

work goes up in smoke under an August 
sun. Church-members who live and work 
Hke Christians only when the minister's 
eye is on them are not sufficiently Chris- 
tianized to stand the test of the judg- 
ment day. The minister is not the 
church, and it is foolish to take it for 
granted that if he is absent the church 
of God practically ceases to be. 

You say that many churches are too 
poor to afford the luxury of a summer 
supply. What of it 1 A summer supply 
can be dispensed with. There are forms 
of church service other than the preach- 
ing service. A praise or prayer or Bible 
study or conference service, or a service 
copied after the model set us by the 
apostolic church, in which each Christian 
had a Psalm or a doctrine or a tongue 
or a revelation or an interpretation, is as 
legitimate and Scriptural as a service in 
which the minister does it all. If you 
feel your church cannot survive a month 
without a weekly sermon, then why not 



70 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

have the four best readers in the church 
read in turn sermons from four mod- 
ern pulpit princes ? Such an innovation 
might prove as refreshing as the dew of 
Hermon. 

Ah, I have not struck the difficulty 
yet ? It is the pastoral work that can- 
not be neglected. Of course not ! But 
it is an error to suppose that only a 
clergyman can do pastoral work. Every 
Christian is by divine appointment a pas- 
tor, and it is of the essence of the Chris- 
tian life to shepherd some of the Master's 
sheep. Laymen when living up to their 
privileges are pastors, and are abundantly 
able to pray with the sick, assist the 
poor, advise the perplexed, and comfort 
the dying. If the church has no mem- 
bers except the pastor who are able and 
willing to do this, it is high time for that 
church to put on sackcloth, and confess 
that it is wretched and miserable, and 
poor and blind and naked. But you say 
sick people prefer the pastor. Suppose 



Objections to Vacations, 71 

they do. Some sick people have a habit 
of preferring a lot of things which -are 
unreasonable, and which it is not best for 
them to have. Persons when sick have 
no more right to be selfish than other 
folks, and should learn the high art of 
sacrificing their preferences and likings to 
the welfare of others. 

But how about the dying and the dead ? 
Surely a clergyman is indispensable in 
such cases ! Not at all. A Roman 
Catholic can go into heaven without 
extreme unction, and there is no reason 
why a Protestant should not die in peace 
without a pastor's prayers in his ears. 
Moreover, a clergyman is not indispen- 
sable at a funeral. No clergyman offici- 
ated at a funeral in New England for 
more than a half century after the land- 
ing of the Pilgrims. Neither the living 
nor the dead, so far as can be ascertained, 
suffered from this singular procedure. 
The clerical custom of conducting funeral 
services is an innovation. Jesus never 



J2 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

did it. He did not lay it down as one of 
the duties of his apostles. Neither the 
twelve nor the seventy were instructed 
to bury the dead. If Paul had ever been 
twitted on being out of town when some 
Christian saint needed burial, he would 
no doubt have replied with swift alacrity, 
*^ Christ sent me not to attend funerals, 
but to preach the gospel ! '' Jf ministers 
of the Lord need a vacation, surely dead 
people must not be allowed to block up 
the way. That church is poor indeed in 
which there is no layman worthy and 
able to offer a prayer above a casket, or 
repeat " dust to dust " beside a grave. 

A minister's vacation should not be 
less than a month. A two weeks' vaca- 
tion is no vacation at all. A clergyman 
cannot drop his work as a clerk drops 
his yardstick or a bookkeeper his ledger. 
The minister's burden is spiritual. It is 
not easily shaken off. It wears down into 
the fibre of the soul. Deliverance comes 
only in time. At least a week is needed 



Objections to Vacations. 73 

for working one's self out of the sermonic 
mood ; and if at the end of this first week 
the preacher must begin to work out 
new sermons for the coming Sunday, his 
vacation practically amounts to nothing. 

In many cases one month's rest in 
twelve is not sufficient. The time de- 
manded depends on the man and the 
parish. Tough and callous men, who 
radiate little energy, require less vacation 
than men of sensitive nature and vast 
genius for expending life. It is cruel to 
expect equal things of all men. Dray 
horses and race horses demand different 
treatment. One man will burn up more 
life in one sermon than another will burn 
up in twenty. To give the first man no 
more vacation than the second is both 
foolish and wicked. The coarse-fibred 
and lethargic man may boast that he 
never takes a vacation ; but if he were 
more finely conscientious in his work, 
and more tremblingly alive in body, mind, 
and spirit, he would suffer the same ex- 



74 Qtdet Talks With Earnest People. 

haustion which overtakes his fine-grained 
and passionate brother. And parishes 
differ in their demands. When paro- 
chial duties are multitudinous and pulpit 
work is unusually exacting, a vacation 
of two or even three months is not 
unreasonably long. Ministers with ex- 
tended Vacations do not spend all their 
days in idleness. In the vacation months 
they store up food with which to feed 
their people through another year. By 
travel or by study and long, uninter- 
rupted meditation they freshen the spirit 
and enlarge the heart that those whom 
the Lord has given them may enjoy a 
richer ministry at their hands. Study 
your minister, brethren, his tempera- 
ment and constitution. Measure his 
strength, and the tax which his work 
levies on it, and then, paying no atten- 
tion to what other churches are doing, 
give him all the time for rest he needs. 



Money. 75 



XL 

Money. 

Money is my theme. It is a delicate 
subject — for a minister. Other men 
may talk about it, but not a minister. 
If he talks about it he is mercenary and 
worldly minded ! But a minister thinks 
about money. He cannot help it. God 
has made money a part of his world. He 
has ordained that money shall play a 
prominent part in all human life. Clergy- 
men, like other mortals, cannot live with- 
out it. It is not disgraceful, therefore, 
for a minister to earn money and spend 
it and talk about it. What God has made 
necessary let no man call unclean. If 
ministers had discussed church finance 
more frankly, laymen would now under- 
stand it better than they do. Subjects 
too delicate for discussion gather round 



j6 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

them a mass of spontaneous and erro- 
neous opinion. Erroneous opinion con- 
cerning matters of moment cripples the 
church, and blocks the progress of the 
kingdom. 

The salary of the minister is not an 
alms, but a debt. This is fundamental. 
Unless a church grasps this, all its after 
life is bound in shallows and in miseries. 
A minister is not a beneficiary or a 
pauper or a beggar. He is a laborer, 
and the laborer is worthy of his hire. 
To give him donations and discounts is 
to demoralize the man and degrade his 
office. His salary is a debt ; and, like all 
debts, it should be paid fully, promptly, 
ungrudgingly. A church which holds 
back a dollar of its pastor's salary is a 
rogue. If there were a penitentiary for 
roguish churches it would be full. An 
honest man's the noblest work of God ; 
a dishonest church is the crowning work 
of the devil. A minister does wrong in 
allowing a church to impose upon him. 



Money. yj 

A church which cheats must be disci- 
pHned. If, after repeated offences, it re- 
fuses to repent, he should shake off the 
dust of his feet against it. 

It is well to pay the minister liberally. 
A church cannot afford to do otherwise. 
If church officials drive a hard bargain, 
and secure a man at the lowest possible 
figure, they lose more than they gain. 
A niggardly financial policy will wreck 
any church. The question should be, 
not how little shall we pay, but how 
much ? *^ There is that withholdeth more 
than is meet, but it tendeth to pov- 
erty." Deacons feel mean after they 
have higgled a week about the pastor's 
salary. It takes the heart out of a 
preacher to feel that he is preaching to 
skinflints. 

The average minister is not paid gene- 
rously. Unless a man is sought after by 
several churches, his salary is almost sure 
to be small. If sought after, his salary 
goes up, not because of Christian liberal- 



78 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

ity, but because of ecclesiastical competi- 
tion. The average clergyman is under- 
paid. Often a faithful man works hard 
for years for small pay, and men of large 
income in the congregation allow him to 
do it. But when a call comes from some 
other church, then the brethren come to 
their senses, and offer to do what they 
should have done years before. Such 
action is contemptible. It should be 
resented by every minister who has self- 
respect. No church should offer to 
advance its minister's salary when he is 
considering a call to another parish. Such 
an offer is a bribe. If from a church 
which has long imposed upon its minister 
because he was too modest to protest, it 
comes too late ; if from a sudden spasm 
of enthusiasm the church is stirred to 
offer more than its resources warrant, its 
folly should be resisted. A minister's 
heart is made glad by a people who are 
generous, not by a people who are shrewd 
bidders at an auction. A church at all 



Money, 79 

times snould pay its pastor up to the level 
of its ability. 

But the chief cause of inadequate sal- 
aries is not depravity, but lack of consid- 
eration. Laymen are too busy to put 
themselves in their pastors place, and 
reason out his needs. There is nothing 
more amusing than the way the average 
layman reasons out a minister's "neces- 
sary expenses," and calculates the amount 
he can save. The man in the moon could 
probably calculate better. A mechanic 
lixes on a certain amount a week. Why 
should not the minister do the same } 
Because he is a public character and the 
mechanic is not. A minister must live in 
public. He owes duties to the community 
which it costs money to discharge. He 
cannot live where he pleases, or dress as 
pleases, or order his life as he pleases. 
His position necessitates expenses which 
other men can escape. His grocer's bill 
— if he is hospitable — is double that of 
the average man in his congregation. To 



8o Qidet Talks With Earnest People, 

preach well he must eat more than beef- 
steak. He must eat books straight through 
the year. He should be allowed at least 
one hundred dollars a year for his library. 
Thrice or quadruple that amount is not 
extravagant. To expect a man to preach 
fresh and juicy sermons while withhold- 
ing from him nutritious mental food is 
cruel. A lean library means a scrawny 
preacher. 

A vacation costs money. Many a 
clergyman stays at home the year round 
because he cannot afford to take his 
family out of town ; or, if he goes, he 
preaches in other pulpits every Sunday 
to pay his travelling and hotel expenses. 
This is not right. There are a few men, 
to be sure, who will preach every Sun- 
day during their vacation, no matter what 
their salary may be ; but how is it with 
your minister } Why does he preach 
through his vacations.'^ 

You cannot know all the channels 
through which a clergyman's salary trie- 



Money, 8 1 

kles away. He owes duties to his denom- 
ination ; and every council, conference, 
or convention he attends makes demands 
upon his purse. You cannot know the 
cases of need he meets continually, many 
of which it is impossible to escape. Peo- 
ple whose names you would never guess 
come to him for assistance. In fixing 
the minister's salary, a generous sum 
should be added for the express purpose 
of meeting just such demands. To ex- 
pose a man to incessant calls for help, 
and furnish him no funds with which to 
meet these calls, is an act of short-sighted- 
ness as frequent as it is lamentable. 
Any man worthy to be your pastor may 
be trusted with a salary liberal enough to 
enable him to be generous toward the 
needy individuals and deserving causes 
which have a reasonable claim upon him 
as your representative and head. In 
short, the necessary expenses of a clergy- 
man are unique. His table, his corre- 
spondence, his library, his travels, his 



82 Qiciet Talks With Earnest People, 

benevolence, all eat up money with in- 
credible swiftness ; and this should be 
borne in mind when the church discusses 
the question, '' What salary shall we 
pay ? " 



Ministerial L iberty. 8 3 



XII. 

Ministerial Liberty. 

How to secure it is an age-long prob- 
lem. Arduous efforts have been made to 
gain it, but success has been only partial. 
The Roman Catholic Church has made 
the clergy independent of the laity, but 
this has not set the clergy free. When 
men are bound together in a system in 
which they rise one above another, rank 
on rank, opportunity is furnished the men 
above to lord it over the men below. 
The Catholic priest may pity the Protes- 
tant minister because the latter is at the 
mercy of his fastidious and fickle parish- 
ioners, but to be dependent on a congre- 
gation for daily bread is not a whit more 
demoralizing than to be dependent for 
ecclesiastical preferment on one's eccle- 
siastical superiors. As a device for gag- 



84 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

ging men, the hierarchy has proved fatally 
effective. 

The Anglican Church, to escape the 
tyranny of the pope, has lodged final 
authority in the state. This is a sur- 
render of the Roman position, and gives 
supreme power to laymen. But it does 
not solve the problem. How may clergy- 
men be free.^ Monarchs and prime min- 
isters are no less formidable than popes 
and cardinals, and every state church pre- 
sents to its clergy the temptation of shap- 
ing their message to please the men who 
have political power. In America our 
Protestant churches, on the whole, vest 
authority in the people. Majorities, di- 
rectly or indirectly, rule in church as well 
as in state. The consequence is, that our 
churches are exposed to all the dangers 
and maladies which are inseparable from 
democracy. 

For the people may be as tyrannical 
as despots and hierarchies. They can 
degrade the clergyman to a puppet or a 



Ministerial L iberty, 8 5 

parrot. They often do. They can wreck 
a church whose pastor discredits their 
opinions, or runs counter to their preju- 
dices. Many a man has been ousted from 
his pulpit simply because he dared to 
speak the truth. 

How to keep the pulpit independent is 
one of our greatest problems. It is more 
than a church problem. It is a question 
in which every citizen of our republic has 
a vital interest. It is essential to the life 
of a republic that it have in it a body of 
public men free to speak their deepest 
convictions without fear or favor. We 
need leaders who are absolutely untram- 
melled. A large part of the press cannot 
be relied on. The ledger dictates its pol- 
icy. It echoes the opinions of the street. 
It cares nothing for moral leadership, 
and everything for immense circulation. 
Many editors are not free men. Neither 
are many of our political leaders. The 
exigencies of political warfare render them 
diplomatic, and compel them to tone down 



86 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

their utterances. They dare not attack 
evils which ought to be annihilated, or 
advocate policies which ought to be en- 
throned. Even college presidents and pro- 
fessors are liable to be called to account 
by frightened trustees for the utterance 
of opinions which cut across the grain 
of popular conviction. In such a land 
and time it is of sovereign importance 
that the pulpit should be without a fetter. 
Its message should be free from every 
taint of private interest, and from every 
trace of external constraint. Nothing 
cuts the ground from under a minister's 
feet like the suspicion that he is saying, 
not what he thinks, but what his hearers 
expect him to say. The church can have 
no influence over people who believe that 
clergymen are the hired exponents of the 
views of the men who rent the pews. 
The fact that so many clergymen in sla- 
very days apologized for slavery, or winked 
at it, has done more to bring organized 
Christianity in this country into disrepute 



Ministerial Liberty, 87 

than all the infidel publications of the 
century. 

In wide circles of our people the con- 
viction is deeply rooted that ministers are 
the slaves of their congregations, repeat- 
ing a story put into their mouth, afraid to 
strike established wrongs, or to pass judg- 
ment on perfumed sins. And that such 
pulpit cowards actually exist cannot be 
denied. The pressure has been too great, 
and many an unhappy man has fallen. 

And what shall be done about it } Some 
say give us churches generously endowed 
by the gifts of men who are in their 
graves, thus making ministers indepen- 
dent of the people to whom they preach. 
The suggestion is plausible, but hardly 
wise. The only adequate relief — so it 
seems to me — is to be found in recon- 
structed manhood. Not in dead men must 
we seek salvation, but in men who are 
alive. The cowards must be driven from 
the pulpits. Laymen should see that this 
is done. A man too timid to oppose any- 



88 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

thing but ancient evils, or condemn any- 
thing but distant sins, is too timid to be 
a herald of the Lord. There should be 
a healthy sentiment generated in all our 
churches, making it easier for ministers 
to speak boldly, and more disgraceful for 
them to be craven. The preacher should 
be encouraged to speak out his deepest 
thought. Lynx-eyed critics, watching for 
a chance to pounce down upon him for 
a mis-step in the statement of a doctrine, 
should be converted or excommunicated. 
Laymen should be large-minded, chari- 
table, and fair. They should not expect 
the pulpit to reproduce their own ideas, 
and confirm them in their favorite notions. 
Oh, for a layman — who has seen him.^ — 
large enough to say to his minister at the 
close of a sermon full of teaching which 
he cannot accept, " I cannot agree with 
you now, but I thank you for your sermon. 
It has done me good, for it has made me 
think." For a layman to cut down his 
contribution to the church because the 



Ministerial Liberty. 89 

minister has expressed an idea to which 
he is unable to assent is the act of a man 
who would bribe a judge — if he dared — 
to decide in his favor a case in the courts. 
But there is no excuse for cowardly 
ministers. If laymen attempt to intimi- 
date, they, like the devil, should be re- 
sisted. Better lose one's pulpit than 
one's honor. The preacher must do his 
duty, no matter if it cuts his salary in two. 
If he is content to mouth the safe opinions 
of the ruling set in his congregation, he is 
not a prophet, but a toady. If he is a 
puppet, manipulated by a few rich men 
who contribute generously toward church 
expenses, he deserves the contempt of 
men, and is sure of the condemnation of 
God. No mortal on earth is so despicable 
as a pulpit coward. And the man who 
stands next to him in the roll of dishonor 
is a pious despot in the pew. 



90 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 



XIII. 

Liberty Defined. 

No, that is not what I meant. Liberty 
does not mean Hcense. A minister's free- 
dom ends where the rights of his congre- 
gation begin. He has no right to say 
everything in the pulpit that chances to 
pop into his head. It is not his province 
to discuss pohtical parties and measures, 
and harangue people on questions of 
political economy and physical science. 
He is a teacher of religion ; and if he be- 
gins to manifest a sort of omniscience 
which compels him to expound every 
species of knowledge, he is unquestion- 
ably insane, and should be promptly dis- 
missed. 

Nor should he be allowed to preach 
even the text of the New Testament if his 
spirit is spiteful and bitter. A preacher 



Liberty Defined, 91 

is ordained to preach Christ, and no man 
preaches Christ who is not dominated by 
the spirit of love. A sermon is full of 
Christ if it is full of love, though the 
name of Christ is never mentioned in it ; 
and a sermon, if captious and hateful, is 
of the devil, even though the name of 
Jesus opens and closes every paragraph. 
Laymen have a right to rebel if their 
minister is not willing to speak the truth 
in love. 

Nor is a clergyman at liberty to preach 
interpretations of Scripture which over- 
throw the conceptions of truth for which 
his pulpit stands in the community. 
There seems to be lamentable confusion 
at this point. Every now and then a 
clergyman appears who feels it to be his 
inalienable right to preach anything he 
pleases in any pulpit he is able to get 
into. If checked in his course he at once 
poses as a martyr; and the world — which 
has a strange fondness for martyrs — 
rends its raiment^ and throws dust on its 



92 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

head, and pours forth its stock denun- 
ciations of the ineradicable bigotry and 
inexpressible depravity of the Christian 
church. All of which is exceedingly 
funny, and also pathetic. 

Now, the fact is that a man of ordinary 
discernment and honesty will not attempt 
to become the pastor of a church whose 
fundamental doctrines he doubts or de- 
nies. To do so is impudence, if not some- 
thing worse, and deserves the condemna- 
tion both of sinners and saints. What 
right has a Roman Catholic to preach in 
a Protestant pulpit t and why should a 
Unitarian desire to smuggle himself into 
a Trinitarian pastorate ? The chasm be- 
tween Romanism and Protestantism is 
deep and wide, and so also is the chasm 
between Trinitarianism and Unitarianism ; 
and nothing is gained by attempting 
to conceal those chasms. A man is at 
liberty to make his home in any branch 
of the Christian church whose creed his 
mind can accept and his heart rejoice in, 



Liberty Defined, 93 

but to steal as a teacher into a company 
of Christians whose basal tenets he dis- 
cards is the act of a thief and a robber. 
To cast such a man out of the place 
which he has usurped is not bigotry or 
tyranny, but beautiful and necessary jus- 
tice. There is the widest liberty of reli- 
gious thought in America ; and, with our 
multiplicity of denominations, there is no 
reason why any clergyman earnestly desi- 
rous of delivering a message should fail to 
find a congregation willing to grant him 
all the latitude his soul may desire. It 
is no infringement of a man's liberty to 
insist that he stay where he belongs. 

But in many churches there are petty 
tyrannies which ought to be abolished. 
The pastor of a church is by divine right 
a leader. As its executive head he is 
held responsible for the successful admin- 
istration of its affairs. A man who is 
held responsible for the conduct of an 
enterprise must be granted large liberty 
in the prosecution of his work. A gen- 



94 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

eral cannot be condemned for defeat if 
he is not permitted to lay out his cam- 
paign. A business manager who is not 
allowed to manage is not responsible for 
the bankruptcy which overtakes his house. 
A guide who is obliged to follow is no 
guide at all. A minister is not answer- 
able for the outcome of his ministry if 
he is thwarted at every step by men who 
will not approve his methods or adopt 
and work out his suggestions. 

Many a minister is robbed of power by 
the unreasonable demands of his people. 
They demand church prosperity, and 
promptly vote down every measure which 
is likely to produce it. They lie down in 
the ruts of outgrown methods, and then 
berate the poor man who in vain urges 
them to move forward. They weight him 
down with the armor of his predecessor, 
and then stand amazed because he cuts a 
poor figure in fighting the foe. Every 
man must work in his own way, and so 
far as possible the church should endeavor 



Liberty Defined, 95 

to adjust itself to the temperament and 
ideas of its leader. 

The reluctance to back up the minister, 
so frequently met with in our churches, 
is due no doubt in part to the training 
which laymen receive in the business 
world. In business they lay down their 
own plans without advice or interference. 
They say to one man, '' Come," and he 
comes; to another, *'Go," and he goes. 
Such experience begets in many men a 
sort of absolutism which works mischief 
whenever it is introduced into the church. 
It is easier for a camel to go through the 
eye of a needle than for men of a certain 
type to accept graciously outside advice, 
or to co-operate in the execution of plans 
forged in the brain of another. The re- 
fusal of church-members to subordinate 
individual wishes and purposes to the 
working out of a consistent and definite 
policy has crushed many a minister and 
wrecked many a church. Jesus himself 
could do no mighty work among people 



96 Qidet Talks With Earnest People, 

who had no confidence in him ; and unless 
laymen have sufficient confidence in their 
pastor to follow him, his ministry must 
be disappointing to them and disastrous 
to him. Brethren, if your minister is ca- 
pable of leading, follow him. If he is 
incapable, hand him his resignation, and 
secure his successor. To call a man your 
leader, and then tie him hand and foot, is 
action unworthy of sensible men. 

But here, again, liberty has its limits. 
Laymen have a right to help devise as 
well as to execute. It is not to be ex- 
pected that they will consent to be au- 
tomata in the working out of ministerial 
ideas. If a minister is crotchety or auto- 
cratic or bull-headed; if he refuses to take 
laymen into his counsel ; if he insists on 
having everything his own way, and that, 
too, before sundown ; if he attempts, in 
short, to be a czar, — he need not be sur- 
prised to find some morning that his 
sceptre is broken and that his throne 
has passed to another. 



Sympathy, 97 



XIV. 

Sympathy. 

But time and money and liberty are 
not enough. A minister, like other men, 
must live by every word that proceedeth 
out of the mouth of God. And one of 
God's words is sympathy. By sympathy 
I do not mean that pinched and insipid 
thing which the word sympathy often- 
times suggests. Sympathy is more than 
pity or commiseration. A man does not 
like to be pitied. Pit}^ suggests inferi- 
ority, and easily slides into contempt. 
^^How I do pity ministers!" is a senti- 
mental ejaculation often heard on the lips 
of persons who know something of the 
trials which fall to the average parson's 
lot. But why pity ministers more than 
other men.'^ Their life is no harder than 
that of others. Do not all mortals have 



98 Quiet Talks Witli Earnest People. 

their drudgeries and bitter cups, their 
burdens and crowns of thorns ? Why 
should a minister be exempt ? Suppose 
he is gossiped about and mahgned, mis- 
understood and hated? It is enough for 
the servant that he be as his Master, and 
the disciple as his Lord. A man who 
expects to be kept done up in cotton 
has no business to enter the ministry. 
He must take up his cross daily, and 
ought not to whine about it. Constant 
commiseration is debilitating. Whatever 
the clergyman's distresses and miseries, 
he should never be petted or coddled. 

But sympathy warms and feeds the 
heart. It is fellow-feeling. It is feeling 
in company with another. Every true 
man needs it. It is tonic. It is life. 
Without sympathy the minister sickens 
and starves. The nobler the man, the 
more dependent he is on human compan- 
ionship and love. Coarse and callous men 
are indifferent to environment, but men 
of fine sensibilities faint and fall unless 



Sympathy, 99 

braced by hearts which love them. There 
is nothing more pathetic in the Gospels 
than Jesus' question to the disciples in 
the Garden of Gethsemane, '' Could ye 
not watch with me one hour ? " 

The loneliness of the minister - — have 
you ever thought of it ? He is one of 
the most solitary of mortals. He moves 
among men, but he is isolated from them. 
Like his Master, he treads the wine-press 
alone. The world for which he labors is 
openly hostile or chillingly indifferent. 
The words are still sadly significant : ^' Be- 
hold I send you forth as sheep in the 
midst of wolves." The wolves do not use 
their teeth as they did in the days of the 
Roman Empire ; but teeth they still have, 
and every minister who does his duty is 
doomed to be torn to pieces in many a 
circle of the godless and at many a dinner- 
table of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. 
No man can proclaim with unfaltering 
accent the message written in the New 
Testament without encountering the vin- 



lOO Qidet Talks With Earnest People, 

dictive and strenuous opposition of the 
world. The Sabbath-breakers and the 
libertines and the rumsellers, and the gam- 
blers of all stripes and sizes, and the 
fops and cynics and idlers, will all turn a 
deaf ear to his teaching, and will either 
hoot at him, or pass by on the other side 
in sullen silence. It is a cold and unre- 
sponsive world to which the preacher 
brings his message. 

Since, then, the world is unsympathetic, 
the church should glow with enthusiasm 
and good-will. Alas ! many churches are 
almost as dead as the world. Laymen in 
discouraging numbers do not rally round 
their pastor like brothers round a brother. 
They, do not feel with him. They con- 
sider him an alien. Such laymen are 
often interested in the social prestige of 
the church, and take pride in its financial 
prosperity, but they have no fraternal in- 
terest in the man who fills the office of 
shepherd and teacher. They forget that 
a minister is human, and needs encourage- 



Sympathy, loi 

ment and affection. They are good men, 
but sympathy is not one of their graces. 

It is not hostility but indifference which 
kills preachers. Opposition on the part 
of obstreperous saints may at times prove 
medicinal, and prepare a minister for 
larger work. But apathy — it is fatal. It 
will take the heart out of a giant. It can 
discourage even a St. Paul. To plan and 
hope and toil and pray while all around 
him professing Christians stand as list- 
less and unconcerned as were the crowds 
which watched the progress of the aw- 
ful tragedy on Golgotha, — this is a form 
of crucifixion which many a minister has 
suffered, and in many a parish the tragedy 
still goes on. 

Even at the best a minister's work 
is full of discouragement and disappoint- 
ment. All that is good and bad in the 
human heart comes to the surface in a 
Christian church. One never knows men 
until he attempts to live with them. 
Working together in the bonds of church 



I02 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

fellowship gives surprising revelations of 
human nature, and furnishes added proofs 
of the need of redemption through Christ. 
Scoffers often grow voluble over the self- 
ishness and hypocrisy inside the churches, 
but ministers can add several chapters 
to the scoffers' doleful story. No matter 
how faithfully a clergyman may labor, 
he must bear always on his heart the 
burden of work done apparently in vain. 
Under his ministry some men degenerate 
into hypocrites, others fall into open sin, 
others are carried away by heresies and 
superstitions. The sword passes through 
his heart again and again. Because he 
keeps his despondencies and despairs out 
of his sermons, do not imagine he has 
none. There are crises in every minis- 
ter's life in which a cheering word is 
meat and drink for forty days. Such 
words are cups of cold water which con- 
siderate laymen will never fail to give. 

It is a pernicious heresy that all the 
church wants of men is their money. No 



Synnpathy. 103 

church can live and grow on gold alone. 
There are other things not a whit less 
necessary which laymen have it in their 
power to give, and which they too often 
thoughtlessly withhold. Just a word of 
rejoicing when the Spirit w^orks mightily 
in the parish, and the sterile fields burst 
into bloom ; just a word of regret when 
the wheels of the Lord's chariot drag 
heavy and slow — such a word dropped 
occasionally into the ear of the leader is 
one of the most valuable contributions 
which any layman is able to offer. And 
to offer this is within reach of the hum- 
blest. Even the mightiest of the proph- 
ets has his strength increased by the 
whispered " Godspeed " of the poorest 
and obscurest of God's saints. If the 
Son of God himself in a darkened hour 
craved the support of steadfast and sym- 
pathetic hearts, be assured that no one 
of his ministers in these hurried and 
earthy-hearted times is above the need 
of the sympathy of his brethren. 



I04 Qidet lalks With Earnest People, 



XV. 

Co-operation. 

But sympathy is not complete mitil it 
expresses itself in action. Good feelings 
are not enough. They must blossom in 
good deeds. Sympathy without works is 
dead. Minister and laymen must work 
together. When they do this, all things 
are possible. It is because they do not 
do it that the millennium is so far away. 

The curse of the centuries is the delu- 
sion that religion is a thing which can be 
conducted and controlled by the clergy 
alone. For a thousand years the policy 
of the Church of Rome fostered this delu- 
sion. The entire administration and wor- 
ship of the church were monopolized by 
the hierarchy, while the laity degenerated 
into disfranchised spectators. In many 
countries this is Catholicism still. One 



Co-operation. 105 

of the sounds which every tourist through 
Europe brings home with him is the 
monotonous droning of the priests heard 
in all the cathedrals and churches. 
Whether any one is present or not, the 
industrious repetition of unintelligible 
words goes on. Christianity seems to be 
a vast machine whose wheels must be kept 
everlastingly turning, and whether the 
turning has any effect on human life or 
not, it is the business of the clergy to keep 
the machine grinding. From such foolish- 
ness Martin Luther endeavored to deliver 
Christendom, but three hundred years 
after his death we have not yet reached 
the promised land. The virus of the 
Romish poison is in us still. Errors in- 
grained by the precept and practice of 
centuries are not easily eradicated. The 
luxury of looking on while the priest does 
the work is too sweet to be surrendered. 
We count ourselves Protestants, but retain 
the temper and habits of our Roman 
Catholic ancestors. In theory we hold 



io6 Quiet Talks With Earliest People. 

that every Christian is a king and priest 
unto God ; that the veil has been rent in 
twain, giving every follower of Jesus un- 
hindered access to the holy of holies ; 
that to every redeemed soul the command 
is given, *^ Go, disciple the nations;" and 
that all church-members — both laymen 
and clergymen — are brethren in the 
Lord. This is our theory, but we shrink 
from living it. 

In many a Protestant parish the min- 
ister is practically a priest. To him are 
committed all the mysteries. His privi- 
leges and powers are unique. He must 
do all the thinking, planning, planting, 
harvesting. He is responsible for every- 
thing that happens, from the conversion 
of a soul to the creation of a deficit. To 
him are given the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven. Whatsoever he binds is bound, 
and whatsoever he looses is loosed. The 
church is known by his name. Its own. 
members have a habit of speaking of it 
as though they were outsiders. If for 



Co-opei'ation. 107 

any reason prosperity lingers, the fault 
lies at his door. The laity are spectators. 
They look on, listen, put money into the 
contribution-box. This latter makes them 
bold to do more. They criticise, pass 
judgment, even crowd into the seat of the 
scornful. The church is a Sunday theatre, 
and they take a box for the season. The 
preacher is the star actor, and the quartet 
is the orchestra furnishing music between 
the acts. This is not caricature. It is a 
photograph — a snap shot taken on the 
spot — of a section of current Christi- 
anity. The photograph may suggest why 
we have so many distressing and unsolved 
problems. Until laymen become helpers, 
yoke-fellows, servants, fellow-laborers, her- 
alds, pastors, fishers of men, co-workers 
with their leader and with God, the church 
is, of all institutions, most miserable, and 
we are yet in our sins. 

Is there a church problem which co- 
operation will not solve } Take, for in- 
stance, that of the Sunday evening service. 



io8 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

Church-members are rapidly reaching the 
conclusion that for them one Sunday ser- 
vice is sufficient. Their conviction is also 
steadfast that the pastor should preach a 
Sunday evening sermon. The pastor goes 
into the pulpit, and his people remain in 
their parlors. The result is a disheart- 
ened preacher, and an appalling area of 
unoccupied pews. This is the Sunday 
evening problem ! How can it be solved } 
Simply by laymen going to church 
Sunday evening. Why should they not 
go } If the need for an evening service 
has vanished, then by all means let the 
service be abolished. Each church must 
determine this for itself. What sense is 
there in squandering the time of the 
sexton and the nervous energy of the 
preacher in keeping up a service the need 
of which has disappeared 1 But needed or 
not, so long as the service is maintained, it 
is the duty of laymen to attend it. 

^'We must keep the church open," cry 
the stay-at-homes, not knowing what they 



Co-operation. i og 

say. When is a church open ? When the 
doors are unbolted and the gas is lighted ? 
No ! When a church keeps open house 
it itself must be present to welcome the 
guests. An open church means a church 
with Christians in it ready to welcome all 
comers. The world cares nothing for 
empty church buildings. Without people 
in them they are cold as refrigerators and 
depressing as sepulchres. A dwindling 
and deserted church service is one of the 
deadliest of all enemies of faith. Better 
hold no service whatever than a service 
with an occupant in every tenth pew. 
The Sunday evening service is not attrac- 
tive unless made so by the Lord's people. 
Where people in large numbers congre- 
gate, other people want to go. It is a cold 
world, and a fire always draws a crowd. 
There is no fire so congenial and attrac- 
tive as that kindled by a large worshipping 
congregation. To suppose that the un- 
converted are going to rush into church 
buildings left vacant by the very men who 



no Qidet Talks With Earnest People, 

profess to believe that ''he that believeth 
and is baptized shall be saved ; but he that 
disbelieveth shall be condemned," is to 
indulge in the suppositions of a fool. A 
preacher of extraordinary gifts may draw 
a crowd into a building, but little is gained 
unless laymen are present to draw the 
crowd into the kingdom of God. It is not 
the preacher but the church against which 
the gates of Hades shall not prevail. 
When laymen work to fill the churches, 
preachers will preach better than they do. 
Every minister ought to have as many 
assistant pastors as there are members 
of his church. Unless backed up by his 
church, he can do nothing. Peter was 
mighty on the day of Pentecost, not be- 
cause he had a fluent tongue, but because 
there stood behind him one hundred and 
twenty men and women in whose faces 
there lingered traces of the glory of the 
tongues of fire. 



Considerateness, 1 1 1 



XVI. 

Considerateness, 

It is a high virtue, and a rare one. 
It involves throwing one's self into an- 
other's place. And that takes time. And 
folks are busy. And that is why there 
are so many inconsiderate people. 

Have you ever made a serious effort 
to put yourself into a minister's place .^ 
Do you realize that he is a public ser- 
vant, and that a thousand people have a 
claim upon his strength and time 'i There 
are only twenty-four hours in the day, 
and for every waking hour there are 
at least a dozen claimants. Evidently a 
minister cannot do everything which he 
may be asked to do. 

" I wonder where our pastor is. I do 
not see why he is not here ! " petulantly 
exclaimed one evening in my hearing a 



112 Qiciet Talks With Earnest People, 

leading church woman at a Y. M. C. A. 
anniversary. She was a saint. She was 
zealous to have her pastor foremost in 
every good work and conspicuous in the 
highest seat at all the feasts. It nettled 
her to think that he of all men should 
be absent from an occasion so important. 
She did not stop to think that a minis- 
ter cannot attend all the meetings held 
in his own church, much less those of 
all the philanthropic and religious organ- 
izations which may be doing business in 
his town. On that very night the sup- 
posed culprit was helping forward two 
other deserving enterprises, one early in 
the evening by his presence, and the 
other later on by an address. It is self- 
evident, and yet needs to be frequently 
asserted, that a minister cannot be in two 
places at the same time. 

Laymen, as a rule, expect too much ; 
not too much thought in sermons, not 
too much Christlikeness in character, but 
too much pottering around at miscellane- 



Considerateness. 113 

ous things. In many a parish too much 
pastoral calHng is demanded. There are 
church-members whose chief end in Ufe, 
apparently, is to be called upon ; and 
there are clergymen foolish enough to 
cater to this morbid craving. They cod- 
dle the soreheads to reduce their croak- 
ing. They steal time from their study 
to keep people in a good humor who 
have an abnormal liking for attention. 
This is all wrong. The chief end of 
man, or woman, is not receiving pastoral 
calls ; and church-members who grow 
grumpy nf not called upon up to the 
level of their fancy ought to be excom- 
municated as disturbers of the peace. 
There are sins as unchristian and mis- 
chievous as drunkenness and prize-fight- 
ing, and chronic grumbling is one of 
them. It is a demon to be cast out of 
a church at all hazards. No sensible 
pastor will ever squander time on a pro- 
fessing Christian who has made it the 
rule of his life not to minister but to 



114 Qtiiet Talks With Earnest People! 

be ministered unto, and who compels 
many to give their lives a ransom for 
him. Pastoral calling has its place ; and 
a minister who turns his back upon it 
commits, in my judgment, a serious 
blunder. Sermons are warmer and juicier 
after the pastor has been in the homes 
of his people. There is no book quite 
so inspiring and suggestive to a genuine 
preacher as the life of his parish. But 
pastoral calling may become a millstone 
round the minister's neck. He may do 
too much of it. He may wear himself 
out in the attempt to satisfy the vora- 
cious demands of unreasonable people. 

Laymen can help the pastor in pastoral 
work by being considerate. It is not for 
them to dictate how many calls shall be 
made each year, or who are the people to 
be called upon. All such exactions are 
arbitrary and tyrannical. The pastor 
knows his parish better than any one 
else. He knows the people who need him 
most, knows his own strength and the 



Considerateness, 115 

various demands upon it, and should, 
therefore, be given large liberty in plan- 
ning his pastoral labors. To you out- 
siders the calling may seem haphazard or 
partial or slovenly, but it will be neces- 
sary for you to know a great many things 
which you do not know now before you 
are fitted to pass judgment on him. Be 
considerate. To throw at him as he en- 
ters your door the number of months 
which have elapsed since his last call, or 
to remind him that some one else has 
received two calls to your one, or to in- 
sinuate that his predecessor was ever so 
much more faithful in calling than some 
men you have known, is a species of re- 
fined cruelty which Christian love ought 
to abolish. The only Christian way to 
get even with the minister, who in your 
judgment is remiss in coming to see you, 
is to call upon him yourself. If, as you 
think, he is doing you an injustice, why 
not heap coals of fire on his head } Have 
a quiet talk with him in his study. 



Ii6 Qiciet Talks With Earnest People. 

Or if you are not brave enough to ven- 
ture into the parsonage, request him by 
letter to call on you. If you have a sor- 
row that you want to talk about, or a sin 
which you desire to confess, or a problem 
on which you seek light, send for him. 
He will be glad to come. It delights a 
minister to have his people lay their per- 
plexities before him. He is ordained 
to help people. He cannot help them 
unless they tell him what it is that 
troubles them. How much more sensi- 
ble to invite him into your house, and 
receive from him the help you need, than 
to sit and sulk and make the heart bitter 
by counting up the wrecks which come 
and go before the door-bell rings. And 
if you are sick, of course you will send 
for him. Why not .^ You send for your 
physician, why not for your minister } 
Your physician does not know you are 
sick unless notified. How can the min- 
ister be expected to know 1 He is a 
representative of the omniscient God, but 



Considerat€7tess, 117 

he himself has all the limitations of men. 
The Almighty does not see fit to indicate 
to his prophets by special revelation the 
physical condition of the members of 
the church. When you are sick let the 
pastor know it. That is sensible, consid- 
erate, Christian. But to lie in bed for 
one week or six, wondering why he 
doesn't come, telling every caller in plain- 
tive tones that the pastor has not yet 
called, and to keep on w^hispering to 
your friends for six months after you 
get well that during your illness the pas- 
tor never came to see you — that is neither 
sensible nor considerate nor Christian. 
Let your considerateness be known unto 
all men, especially your pastor. 



1 1 8 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 



XVII. 

Thoughtlessness. 

It causes a deal of mischief in the 
Church of God. It is not an inhospitable 
disposition, but thoughtlessness, which 
leads many church-members to neglect 
strangers who come to worship with 
them. Let us hope it is the same dis- 
temper which glues men sometimes to 
the end of their pew, so that late comers 
are obliged to clamber in over their knees. 
It is not malice, but heedlessness, which 
impels a layman to rummage under his 
pew for overshoes and umbrella during 
the singing of the closing hymn. What 
is it but absent-mindedness that starts 
belated pew-holders up the aisle during 
the singing of the anthem } Not lack 
of mind, but lack of thought, is respon- 
sible for the conduct of the woman who 



Thoitghtlessness . 119 

disturbs her neighbors through prayer 
and Scripture reading by her incessant 
whispering. And what but paralysis of 
the organ of thought can account for the 
fact that a congregation of courteous peo- 
ple will sometimes turn their back at the 
close of service upon a minister who has 
preached in exchange with the pastor 
without a word of greeting or thanks ? 
To-day, as in the days of Isaiah, the 
Almighty has just cause to complain, 
'' My people doth not consider." 

Thoughtlessness is one of the demons 
which every minister soon learns to fear. 
For instance, if some good brother seizes 
him while on the way to the pulpit, and 
pours into his ears the latest gossip, it is 
not considered ministerial to say to such 
a m^an, '^ Get thee behind me, Satan.'* 
Though oppressed and afflicted, he must 
not open his mouth. Or some nervous 
saint may keep turning over the pages 
of the hymn-book straight through the 
preaching of the sermon, not knowing 



I20 Qidet Talks With Emptiest People, 

that the constant turning of pages may 
be to a sensitive man as distracting as 
the buzzing of a full-fledged sawmill. 
Or at the close of the service some one 
may rush forward, and drag him from the 
pulpit stairs into a subject a thousand 
miles away from the sermon. This is 
^* the most unkindest cut of all." To 
labor hard to bring a congregation into 
the central glory of a truth, and then 
have some one dash forward at the 
earliest opportunity — presumptively to 
render thanks for the help he has re- 
ceived, but in reality to ventilate his 
mind on some subject totally foreign to 
the day, or to propound a curious conun- 
drum which has no conceivable relation 
to anything which has been said — is in- 
expressibly galling and disheartening. 
After a preacher has struck with all his 
might on the heart-chords of a congrega- 
tion, and then discovers that in at least 
one of his apparently most attentive lis- 
teners there is no hint of a response, he 



Thotighilessness. 121 

instinctively looks around for Elijah's 
juniper-tree. Why God allows the devil 
to play such pranks on ministers in the 
very hour of their exhaustion is not yet 
revealed. It may be to bring them more 
completely into the fellowship of the suf- 
fering of his Son. At the close of one 
of Jesus' sermons on the sin against 
the Holy Ghost, a preoccupied egotist 
shouted out, '^ Master, speak to my 
brother, that he divide the inheritance 
with me." It would be hazardous to say 
that the Son of man ever lost his temper ; 
but if there is a trace of impatience vis- 
ible anywhere in his recorded sayings, it 
is in the answer which he gave to this 
exasperating and incorrigible sinner. 

But a dash of cold water at the close 
of a sermon is not so fatal as an inter- 
ruption in the midst of sermon-building. 
It is difficult for the average man to 
realize the value of uninterrupted time. 
He himself does not get a day without 
its interruptions, nor does he want it. A 



122 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

minister, however, if he is to do his best 
work, must have at least a part of certain 
days absolutely free from all intrusion. 
*' But I want to see him only a minute,'' 
pleads the importunate inquirer, not know- 
ing what he asks. He who thinks that 
only a minute is a trifle does not know 
the nature of the mind, and has probably 
done no sustained and constructive think- 
ing. '' Only a minute " may ruin the 
work of a day. In , a minute an express- 
train can be thrown from the track, but 
to place it again on the rails requires the 
arduous labor of hours. The mind in its 
highest operations moves more swiftly 
than the limited express, and the inter- 
ruption of only a minute may hurl the 
train of thought down an embankment 
and stop all progress indefinitely. In 
the hot hours of sermonic creation, when 
the mental furnace is seething and the 
molten thought is ready to be poured 
into words, an outsider who asks for a 
minute not only checks the momentum 



Thotcgktlessness. 123 

of the mental process, but chills the glow 
of the emotions, and introduces into the 
mind a foreign substance which is not 
easily cast out. In those hours when 
your pastor goes into the mountain to 
commune with God, do not let the devil 
tempt you to ring his door-bell. 

This seems all foolishness to some of 
you. You know ministers who are not 
so cranky. They are open at all times to 
their people. They say so with swelling 
pride. Morning, afternoon, and night the 
latch-string is out, and whosoever will may 
come. But it must be borne in mind 
that there are preachers and preachers. 
Some are carpenters and others are poets. 
Some men build sermons as carpenters 
build houses, — they manufacture them. 
They cut out the material piece by piece, 
join the pieces together, and sandpaper 
and varnish them at their leisure. They 
can drop their work at any moment as 
easily as the carpenter drops his ham- 
mer. The poet-preacher is a different 



1 24 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

man. His sermons are not made ; they 
grow. Sermons come to him as poems 
do, in rare and luminous hours, which 
hours when they come must be seized 
and used. Some days are opaque. No 
light streams through. And then there 
comes — 

One of the charmed days 

When the genius of God doth flow. 

Mind and heart are ready. In a few 
hours the work of weeks bursts into blos- 
som, an argument is forged, a truth is un- 
folded, a vision is worked out into speech 
which will make glad many hearts. 

As a rule, the preachers who see peo- 
ple at all hours through the week do not 
see many people at the hour of service 
on Sunday. If your minister lacks the 
will-power to protect himself from peo- 
ple who steal his time, you ought to buy 
him a large-mouthed bulldog, which shall 
serve as a sort of flaming sword to guard 
the study door. 



Ways of Killing a Sermon, 125 



XVIII. 

Ways of Killing a Sermon. 

A LAYMAN may, with a little practice, 
develop amazing dexterity in counteract- 
ing the influence of his pastor. After the 
preacher has kindled by his sermon a fire 
in many hearts, a layman may, if indus- 
trious and enterprising, extinguish the fire 
in all the people near him. It is a criti- 
cal season in the week, — the brief period 
immediately succeeding the benediction. 
In those few moments a layman can, if 
he will, do infinite mischief. He can turn 
his back on the stranger that stands near- 
est him, and show by his conduct that the 
pastor's sermon on Brotherliness is a mere 
theory, not intended to be reduced to prac- 
tice, at least in that church. Or, if he 
chooses to be talkative, he can smother 
the sermon in his conversation. He can 



126 Quiet Talks ivitJi Earnest People, 

plunge into a discussion of the music. 
That theme is very fascinating and fatal. 
He can say: ''How did you enjoy the 
music ? How did you like the Soprano ?" 
or, '' What did you think of the Bass ? " 
Such questions are exceedingly effective 
in the mouth of an expert sermon-killer. 

A dozen members of the church pro- 
pounding such questions to every one they 
meet convert the house of God into a 
concert-hall, and train people to look upon 
public worship as a performance to be 
measured by the aesthetic gratification 
which it affords to the congregation. 
Many a minister, after pouring out his 
very life to convict men of their sins, or 
to lift them to the level of some arduous 
duty, has been cut to the heart by hearing 
his best people discussing in the aisles 
the excellences or defects of the anthem, 
and passing judgment on the voices of 
the singers. 

But the question concerning music is 
not a whit more demoralizing than the 



Ways of Killing a Sermon, 127 

question heard even more frequently, 
" How did you like the sermon ? " Ask- 
ing that question has become a habit 
which it will probably take centuries to 
eradicate. It is a demon which can be 
cast out only by prayer and fasting. Even 
the saints are addicted to the use of it. 
When strangers come to the church, the 
first question at the close of the service 
often is, " How did you like the sermon? " 
No wonder spiritual results of preaching 
are so meagre. What can be expected 
from preaching unless laymen realize that 
they are to follow up the work of persua- 
sion by driving home the word set forth 
by the preacher t Sermons are not toys 
to be played with, or pretty pieces of rhet- 
oric on which every member of the con- 
gregation is expected to pass judgment. 
To ask, How did you like the sermon } 
is to drag it down to the level of a crazy- 
quilt, or a piece of crochet-work. A ser- 
mon is not an exquisite bit of literary 
bric-a-brac, to be chattered over and judged 



128 Quiet Talks with Earnest People. 

by the technical rules of art. It is not a 
dumpling into which every self-constituted 
critic is invited to stick his fork that he 
may praise or condemn the cook. A ser- 
mon is a solemn warning, a bugle-call to 
duty, a burning condemnation, an earnest 
stroke against a giant wrong, an exhorta- 
tion to high endeavor, the illumination of 
a majestic truth. What a question for an 
earnest Christian to ask inside the house 
of God, — '' How did you like it .? " 

Sermons are preached, not to be liked, 
but to be accepted and lived. Suppose, 
pray, you did not like the sermon ! What 
of it } Suppose that scapegrace who sat 
with you in the pew went away disgusted ! 
When the arrow goes in, curses often 
come out. John the Baptist, Jesus of 
Nazareth, Peter and John, were not anx- 
ious that their sermons should be liked. 
Why should you be so solicitous concern- 
ing the opinion of the critics 1 Never ask 
again that insipid question. How did you 
like the sermon } Such a question in- 



Waj/s of Killing a Sermon, 1 29 

jures the one who asks it, and debauches 
the person who answers it. It trains men 
to measure sermons by false standards, 
and to seek for entertainment rather than 
for truth. 

No wonder so many ministers have been 
spoiled, and are to-day preaching sermons 
full of everything else but the gospel. 
They itch to catch the crow^d, and cater 
for applause, because they have been ruined 
by churches which have trained them to 
think of the sermon as something to be 
admired, eulogized, exulted over. A true 
preacher speaks for God, and whether the 
people like the message or not is the very 
last of all questions to be considered. No 
church can have conversions in it whose 
leading members ask the unconverted. 
How did you like the sermon 1 When a 
man is wrestling with problems of life and 
destiny, it is an insult to throw at him 
such a frivolous inquiry. It calls him off 
from a decision unspeakably momentous, 
invites him to pose as a critic, and requests 



130 Quiet Talks with Earnest People, 

him to pass judgment on the instrument 
which in the providence of God is being 
used for his regeneration. Many an aroused 
soul has been hurled from a serious mood 
of conviction into the mood of a trifler by, 
How did you like the sermon ? 

It is impossible for earnest men to do 
anything in the pulpit unless they are 
seconded by earnest men in the pews. 
Of what avail are passion and solemnity 
and burning earnestness in the preacher 
if the sermon is followed up by a swarm 
of triflers propounding idle questions } 
Holy impressions are easily dissipated. It 
does not take much to strangle new-born 
aspirations. One silly interrogation may 
crush a rising impulse toward God. The 
church should carry on and complete the 
work begun by the preacher. All conver- 
sation at the close of the service should 
deepen and fasten the impression of the 
hour. The church should be a trumpet 
through which the voice of the preacher 
gains volume and power. But if the 



Wafs of Killing a Sermon, 1 3 1 

trumpet gives an uncertain voice, who shall 
prepare himself for war ? If the preacher 
cries, '' In God's name, act ! " and the 
saints stand around and ask, '' How do you 
like that ? " who of the unconverted will 
prepare himself for the marriage supper 
of the Lamb ? 

The crucial question is not, Did you 
like it ? but, Did it help you ? Did it 
comfort you ? Did it give you new visions 
of duty ? Did it bring you nearer to the 
Lord ? The parable of the sower has an 
abiding significance. Those birds which 
devour seeds are like the poor : they are 
always with us. In our days such birds 
have no feathers, but in instinct they are 
true to the nature of the birds which Jesus 
saw ; and one of their favorite methods of 
rendering vain the work of the Sower is 
asking. How did you like the sermon ? 



132 Quiet Talks with Earnest People, 



XIX. 

Inspiring the Minister. 

What means the clamor of the churches 
for young men ? It means that youth has 
vim and passion, and that the gospel has 
fresh stimulus and tonic on the lips of 
men whose hearts have not been saddened 
by disappointment or worn out by burdens 
too heavy to be borne. He is a rare man 
who in our day can do the work of a pas- 
tor for thirty years and maintain his energy 
undiminished and his enthusiasm unim- 
paired. With multiplied experiences to 
draw the fire out of him, no wonder many 
a minister becomes in later life as cold as 
an extinct volcano. 

If you wish to keep your minister young, 
be regular in your church attendance. 
Possibly a minister ought to rise superior 
to his environment, and speak with as 



Inspiring the Minister. 133 

much unction to quartered oak as to liv- 
ing hearts ; but a minister after all is only 
human, and in the course of time empty 
pews wear on him. Laymen, as a rule, 
do not realize the importance of church 
attendance. If they did they would not 
so often allow a cloud, or a shower, or a 
wind, or a snow, or a caller, or a news- 
paper, or a headache, or a fit of laziness, 
to keep them at home. A minister de- 
serted by his representative men dies. 
He dies by inches. No man can preach 
with sustained fire and hope whose lead- 
ing people show by their desultory atten- 
dance that public worship is to them one of 
the incidentals or electives of life. Noth- 
ing will so surely take the spring and snap 
out of a man as speaking on great themes 
to empty pews. It makes a man prema- 
turely old. Brethren, be in your place at 
the hour for public worship. The church 
is expected by the world to render worship 
on the Lord's Day to God. The rendering 
of this worship is one of the sacrifices to 



134 Qti'iet Talks With Earnest People, 

be offered perpetually by the followers of 
Jesus. The world's redemption is delayed 
by Christians who mar the sacrifice by 
selfish neglect to take part in it. Be in 
your place every time. Your presence 
gives life to the preacher. Your face 
helps him more than you can ever know. 
Your faithfulness strengthens the grip of 
Christ upon your community, and hastens 
the coming of the golden age. 

And take heed how you hear. Listen- 
ing is a high art. Among many Christians 
it is a lost art. Make it your business to 
pay attention. Whip your mind whenever 
it runs off. Go after it a hundred times 
if necessary. Cudgel it back to its work. 
The church is not a place for lounging or 
dreaming. Public worship is work ; and no 
one can worship truly unless he girds 
up the loins of his mind, and makes ener- 
getic use of all the intellect and will-power 
which the Almighty has given him. The 
failure of intelligent people to take in 
spoken discourse is something disheart- 



Inspiring the Mi)iiste7\ 135 

ening. He is an exceptional Christian 
who is able to follow a sermon closely 
from the first sentence to the last. Hence 
the ignorance of many church-members. 
Hence the misunderstandings and mis- 
interpretations. Many persons mishear. 
Mishearing is chronic with them. They 
invariably drop out the critical qualifying 
phrase of a sentence and the cardinal 
paragraph of a sermon. They do this 
because their mind takes cat -naps. Like 
a worn-out sewing-machine, it drops 
stitches. What minister has not blushed 
on hearing some of his best hsteners en- 
deavor to give a resume of his sermon. 
Every preacher has reason to be devoutly 
thankful to God that he is not responsi- 
ble for everything which people think he 
has said. It was his insight into human 
nature which led Christ to end his dis- 
courses with, ^* He that hath ears to hear, 
let him hear.'' 

Let it not be forgotten that laymen are 
an important factor in the preaching of 



136 Quiet Talks Witli Eajmest People, 

a sermon. The sermon is determined by 
the preacher, the theme, and the congre- 
gation. A public speaker, some one has 
said, gives back in flood what he receives 
from his audience in vapor. But suppose 
there is no vapor arising from the people, 
and that the audience is a Sahara desert, 
arid and dead. How can a man speak 
with glowing tongue unless his hearers 
help him } Preachers in larger numbers 
will preach with genuine Pentecostal power 
when their people supply the atmosphere 
in which great speech becomes possible. 

Work, then, for the sermon through 
the week. You have a part in it as well 
as your pastor. Subscribe for at least 
one religious paper that you may keep 
in touch with the great movements in 
which God is expressing himself in your 
time. Buy the best books. Read church 
history. Study the history of doctrine. 
Own the great volumes which throw light 
on the Scriptures. A few men and women 
in a congregation, informed and truth- 



Inspiring the Minister. 137 

hungry, capable of appreciating the best 
thought which the preacher can give, are 
a safeguard against ministerial laziness, 
and a ceaseless spur to more strenuous 
labor. Such persons call out his reserves 
and resources. Are you an inspiration to 
your pastor.? 

Keep your Sundays free for earnest 
reading. Burn up the Sunday newspaper. 
It is an indefensible, intolerable curse. 
It exists simply and solely to swell the 
income of wealthy and greedy newspaper 
proprietors. A Christian ought to be 
ashamed to have it in his house. Is not 
a man sufficiently secularized by six days' 
contact with the world without dipping 
his mind on Sunday morning once more 
into the muddy stream in which he has 
dipped it on the preceding six days 1 
What can be expected of a Christian in 
public worship who comes to church with 
a newspaper stuffed into his mind 1 He 
is cold as a clod to the touch of the 
preacher, and lowers the spiritual tempera- 



138 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

ture of the entire congregation. William 
E. Gladstone was an ideal worshipper in 
God's house. He concentrated all his 
great powers upon the sermon. He was 
interested because he was informed. He 
was informed because throughout life he 
had made diligent use of his Sundays. 
He declared in old age that he would 
not have lived so long had he not always 
kept his Sundays quite apart from his 
political life. It was pure refreshment to 
him to turn to holier things on that day. 
It enabled him to learn more of religious 
subjects than perhaps any other layman of 
our century. It gave him that firm and 
splendid ground which ennobled and hal- 
lowed all his actions. " Go thou and do 
likewise." 



Appreciati7ig tJie Mmister. 139 



XX. 

^Appreciating the Minister. 

Ministers are human. They have 
hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affec- 
tions, passions. If you prick them they 
bleed, and if you appreciate them they 
are strengthened. They are more sensi- 
tive to appreciation than most men be- 
cause of the nature of their work. Their 
work is heart work. It is arduous and 
exhausting. It involves their sympathies 
and affections. To have a thankless con- 
gregation is an agony something like that 
of having a thankless child. 

Moreover, a minister has many things 
to worry him. He is subject to constant 
and merciless criticism. He is never 
eager to hear all the things that people 
are saying, but in the course of the year 
he is certain to catch enough of the tittle- 



140 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

tattle which goes on around him to trouble 
and depress him. In this way anxieties 
and suspicions often arise which faith is 
not able to shake off. The flippant re- 
mark of some petulant critic may lie like 
lead on his heart for weeks. He loses 
confidence in himself. He imagines his 
critics more numerous than they are. 
It has happened more than once that a 
good man has been worried into insanity, 
or the grave, by the impression that his 
parish was hostile to him. The impres- 
sion may have been created by the bad 
feeling known to exist in only two or 
three homes. A minister, to do his best 
work, must live in an atmosphere of good 
will. Laymen ought to create such an 
atmosphere. While the busybodies are 
carrying to the pastor stories of dissatis- 
faction, the saints ought to bear to him 
messages of affectionate good cheer and 
enthusiastic approval. 

The finest results of a minister's labors 
are below the reach of the eye. They 



Appreciating the Minister, 141 

cannot be computed or tabulated. They 
are spiritual satisfactions, heart impul- 
sions, soul inspirations, which only those 
who receive them know anything about. 
A minister often fails to realize the mag- 
nitude of the work he is doing. Because 
the people say nothing, he concludes his 
ministry is in vain. Many a clergyman 
has carried a burdened heart through 
years of disappointing labor, hungry for 
a word of appreciation which never came, 
finally throwing down his work in de- 
spair, only to find on the eve of his de- 
parture to another parish or the other 
world, how wide was the satisfaction, and 
how genuine the affection for him in the 
hearts of the people. Just a word of com- 
mendation now and then through the 
silent years would have brightened many a 
day that was dark, and made lighter many 
a burden which almost crushed. Tell 
your minister, brethren, that you appre- 
ciate what he is doing. Praise, like 
mercy, is twice blessed. It blesses those 



142 Qiciet Talks With Earnest People. 

who give as well as those who receive. It 
is a shameful thing to sit for a year under 
preaching which makes you a nobler and 
happier man without letting your pastor 
know that in at least one heart the seed 
has fallen, and is bringing forth many fold. 

Laymen ought to practise Paul's words : 
'^ I praise you." Why not praise your 
pastor t Are you afraid of spoiling him } 
Do not fear. Praise spoils no one who is 
not spoiled already. It is true, as Words- 
worth says, that ^^ Praise is dangerous." 
But so also is every other good thing. 
For every man hurt by praise, a thousand 
are starved to death by lack of it. There 
is nothing which humbles a true man like 
generous appreciation. 

Many persons are so unaccustomed to 
speak complimentary words that when 
they attempt it, the words stick in their 
throat ; or if the words get out, they are 
badly bungled. No man under thirty can 
be told that his sermon is very good for a 
young man, without resenting it. He has 



Apprcciatuig the Minister. 143 

Paul's authority for refusing to allow men 
to despise his youth. It is galling to a 
man over sixty to receive compliments 
with a reference to his age tacked away 
in one end of them — a sting, as it were, 
in their tail. Nor is it edifying to hear a 
person begin with, " I don't want to flatter 
you, but " — Such a remark is equivalent 
to saying, "Please don't think I'm a liar 
because I say I enjoyed your discourse." 
Nor does a sensible man want to be as- 
sured that his sermon was '' grand," or that 
his prayer was "splendid." Such enco- 
miums are almost as bad as the eulogy 
of the brother who invariably prefaces his 
remarks with a declaration that he believes 
it to be his duty to encourage a man when 
he does well. Grown men do not like 
to be patted patronizingly on the head. 
Words of commendation, when squeezed 
through the lips by a hard sense of duty, 
bring a chill, instead of a glow, to the 
heart. Praise is best when it comes easily 
and naturally, — 



144 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

*'As showers from the clouds of summer. 
Or tears from the eyelids start." 

A quiet, '' I thank you for your prayer/' 
or '' Your sermon helped me," is worth 
more than all the stilted English Ayhich 
a voluble enthusiast is able to pour into 
a preacher's ears. 

There are ministers who seldom receive 
a word of praise. Their big, eloquent 
brothers go through life with hozannas 
ringing perpetually in their ears, while 
they drudge on unnoticed, with no one to 
stir their pulses by shouting, "Well done." 
It is a mistake to suppose that God's com- 
mendation alone is sufficient. Moses was 
strong, but he was not strong enough to 
hold up his hands to the end of the day. 
" Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the 
one on the one side and the other on the 
other side, and his hands were steady 
until the going down of the sun." Happy 
the minister who is steadied and sustained 
by Christians who appreciate the work 
that is being done, and who hearten their 



Appreciating the Minister. 145 

leader by a frequent word of gratitude and 
appreciation. A minister was one day 
surprised at the close of his sermon to 
have a stranger greet him thus : '* I thank 
you for that sermon ; it did me good." 
He had preached faithfully for a year, 
and no member of his congregation had 
in all that time expressed to him a word 
of appreciation. The words of the stran- 
ger overcame him. To be assured that a 
sermon of his had reached the heart was 
like rain on thirsty soil. He hurried 
home and told his wife the good news. 
They bowed their heads and wept to- 
gether. 



146 Qitiet Talks With Earnest People. 



XXI. 

Criticising the Minister. 

It is a difficult task, but there are times 
when it must be done. By criticism I 
do not mean that aimless detraction in 
which undeveloped church-members occa- 
sionally indulge, but the brave and open 
disapprobation of a minister's conduct, or 
the condemning judgment of his work. 
Ministers are not infallible. Like other 
mortals, they fall into ruts. They some- 
times allow idiosyncrasies to become so 
pronounced as to narrow their influence 
and cripple their power. Alas for a man 
who is placed beyond the reach of intel- 
ligent and discriminating criticism ! There 
is scarcely any limit to the number of 
foolish things a minister may be guilty 
of. He may come to church meetings 
habitually late, or he may sniffle at the 



Criticising the Minister, 147 

close of every paragraph, or he may 
whoop Hke a wild Indian in delivering 
tame ideas, or he may practise elocution- 
ary slides in his prayers, or he may make 
faces which frighten the children, or he 
may stare at the wall instead of looking 
at the people while preaching his ser- 
mons, or he may make the church a place 
in which to rehearse the chapters of his 
next book, or he may refer in every ser- 
mon to his trip to the Holy Land, or he 
may make Missions or some other equally 
good theme his hobby, and ride it straight 
through the year, or he may allow his 
voice to drop into inaudibility at the close 
of every important sentence, or he may 
repeat old sermons so frequently that 
even people with a poor memory find 
him out, or he may go gadding over the 
country shining at all sorts of celebrations 
while his people sit in darkness at home, 
or he may keep on for years mispronoun- 
cing a half-dozen common words to the 
disgust of every high-school girl in the 



148 Qitiet Talks With Earnest People. 

congregation, or — What does your min- 
ister do ? " Oh, if he would only quit 
that ! " is the distressed cry of many a 
long-suffering saint who wants to cure 
his pastor of a bad habit, and does not 
know how to go about it. 

What can be done ? The providential 
remedy is a wife, but the remedy is not 
always sufficient. Some men do not 
marry, and some wives do not know how 
to criticise. Some women are adepts in 
criticism ; but their husbands, being stiff- 
necked and rebellious, refuse to hearken 
to their strictures and admonitions. It 
is not uncommon for both the minister 
and his wife to tumble into the same 
ditch. What can you do t Will you 
write him an anonymous letter } Never ! 
It is the work of a coward and a sneak. 
A minister w^ho values his time will not 
read anonymous letters. Life is too short 
to waste it in reading communications 
whose writers are ashamed to own them. 
If a minister is foolish enough to read 



Criticising the Minister. 149 

an anonymous, faultfinding letter, he is 
almost sure to think it the production of 
some crank or knave, and consequently 
its appeal does not lead him to repent- 
ance. Do not write such letters. If you 
know something you are convinced that 
your pastor ought to know, stand up and 
say it to him like a man. " I withstood 
him to the face," says Paul, in describing 
the way in which he rebuked Peter. Paul 
knew how to censure as well as how to 
praise. 

The object of Christian criticism is to 
edify. To edify is to build up. A man 
is not built up by criticism which he 
never hears. Consequently it is foolish 
to criticise a minister behind his back. 
Such disparagement may offer an outlet 
for one's bad humor, but it does not 
redound to the glory of God. 

If the talk is carried on in the presence 
of children, it becomes a tenfold greater 
sin. What deeper wound can a parent 
inflict upon his child than to render the 



150 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

minister of religion ridiculous to him by 
laughing at his mannerisms, or depreciat- 
ing his intelligence or his piety ! Chil- 
dren are easily prejudiced, and their hearts 
can be readily closed. They are naturally 
trustful and receptive, their affections are 
fresh, and their confidence in adults is un- 
bounded. They give their hearts readily 
to those who are placed over them, and 
it is in their docility of heart that there 
lies the possibility of education and cul- 
ture. To criticise in their presence those 
whose business it is to mould them, de- 
stroys in them the very capacity which 
it is the duty of parents to safeguard 
and develop. The more deeply a child 
loves his pastor or teacher, the more he 
will learn from him. How can a boy be 
helped by a minister whom his father 
picks to pieces every Sunday 1 How can 
the life of a girl be moulded by a man 
whose methods and attainments are con- 
stantly sneered at by her mother t Many 
parents have lamented in later life that 



Criticising the Minister. 151 

their children did not join the church, not 
knowing how to account for such conduct, 
when the reason was that the children 
lost confidence in the church on account 
of the conversations they heard at the 
dinner-table. No matter how limited in 
wisdom or goodness the minister may be, 
it is wicked to criticise him in the pres- 
ence of boys and girls. The office of the 
minister of Christ is sacred, and the child- 
heart should be trained to reverence the 
office by being taught to honor the man 
who fills it. 

Whenever, therefore, you want to cen- 
sure your pastor, follow the directions given 
by the Lord in the eighteenth chapter 
of St. Matthew's Gospel. The minister 
is your brother, and if he has trespassed 
against you by actions which offend, go 
and tell him his fault between you and 
him alone. If he is willing to hear you, 
you have done both him and the church 
an invaluable service. But if he will not 
hear you, then take with you one or two 



152 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

more, that he may know your criticism is 
not a personal crotchet, but the sober 
judgment of representative members of 
the church. If he shall neglect to hear 
them, tell it unto the church. A minister 
too touchy and stubborn to listen to the 
counsel of his best people is a fit subject 
for church discipline. If he insists on 
acting like a heathen, he ought to be 
treated like one. Many a clergyman has 
injured his influence for years by some 
oddity of behavior or crudity of character 
which might have been corrected in a day 
had a few sane and substantial laymen 
been brave enough to call his attention 
to the thing wherein he gave offence. 



Securing a Minister. 153 



XXII. 

Securing a Minister. 

There is only one thing more difficult, 
and that is getting rid of one. In say- 
ing this, I take it for granted that you 
are under a democratic form of church 
government. If your church is a mon- 
archy, the problem is a simple one. In 
that case the preacher is ordered to his 
post by his superior officer. The congre- 
gation has nothing to say. The preacher 
is sent. The church accepts him. 

But Christians in increasing numbers 
are insisting on the right to say who 
shall be their spiritual leaders. Even in 
churches whose government is monarchi- 
cal, there is a growing disposition among 
the laity to transfer the appointment of 
the clergyman from the hands of the 
hierarchy into the hands of the congrega- 



154 Qtiiet Talks With Earnest People. 

tion. It is a privilege highly prized, but 
for it Christendom is paying a great price. 
If monarchy has its dangers and tyran- 
nies, so also has democracy its limitations 
and madnesses. When the local church 
is officered by external authority, there is 
often friction, and sometimes open rebel- 
lion. When the local church is left to 
select its own leader, there is often a 
storm at his coming, and a battle over 
his departure. 

One of the first steps to be taken in the 
needed reform is to abolish the ancient 
and pernicious custom of candidating. It 
is a device of Satan for humiliating min- 
isters and dividing churches. The sys- 
tem is plausible, and ingenious arguments 
can be made for it. But ^* there is a 
way which seemeth right unto a man, 
but the end thereof are the ways of 
death.'' A minister preaches as a can- 
didate. His voice and gestures, his neck- 
tie and theology, his coat and rhetoric, — 
all come under severe scrutiny. At the 



Secicrmg a Ministe7\ 155 

close of the sermon a canvass is made to 
ascertain what the popular estimate of the 
man is. There are usually a few who 
have heard of another son of thunder 
who looms up as a possible prize, and 
this man must of course be heard be- 
fore the vote is taken. He preaches, and 
the church is immediately divided. A 
congregation of intelligent people cannot 
be expected to agree in their tastes. 
Preachers differ from one another as 
widely as fruits do. Some people like 
apples best, others prefer peaches, others 
plums, others pears, and others grapes. 
There is no use arguing about tastes. 
As with fruits, so with men. One man 
prefers Shakespeare, another Milton, an- 
other Burns. There is no use trying to 
persuade them to agree. Whenever two 
preachers of equal ability are placed in 
competition before a congregation, a di- 
vision is inevitable. The amazing thing 
is that so many laymen do not see this. 
After the church has been split into two 



156 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

factions, it is customary to hear a third 
candidate, which usually results in the 
creation of a third faction. This leads to 
a fourth candidate and an additional fac- 
tion. Multitudes of churches have taken 
this broad road which leads to destruc- 
tion, and other multitudes are rushing on 
to wreck themselves by indulging in the 
same inexcusable folly. 

If a candidate is heard at all, every 
wise man in the church should strenu- 
ously insist on a vote being taken before 
another man is allowed to go into the 
pulpit. The candidate himself should de- 
mand this. If a church is unwilling to 
grant his request, then he should pass 
by on the other side. Such a church 
is too wilful and foolish to deserve a 
sensible man for its leader. 

The best advice to a church is. Candi- 
date not at all. It is a useless piece of 
business at the best. What can you tell 
from one sermon } A shallow man, con- 
fident and magnetic, may please you at 



Securing a Minister, 157 

first hearing, while a worthy man, from 
humiUty or physical trepidation, may dis- 
appoint you. You must hear a man 
preach for a year before you have a 
right to judge him. Good preachers are 
better in their twentieth sermon than in 
their first. Candidating does not tell you 
enough. A minister is more than a 
preacher. He does various kinds of work. 
Fidelity in these other labors is as im- 
portant as ability in pulpit ministration. 
Manhood is the supreme qualification. 
You cannot judge of manhood in one 
sermon. 

Candidating is a disgrace to the house 
of God. Who thinks of God when a 
candidate is preaching 1 Not the preacher, 
because he is thinking of the people ; not 
the people, because they are dissecting 
the preacher. Nothing is so demoralizing 
to a Christian church as candidating. It 
converts public worship into a farce. 

Moreover, it is humiliating to the 
preacher. To be inspected like a pumpkin 



158 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

at a fair, to be put through the paces 
Hke a horse at a race, to be judged by a 
miscellaneous assembly many of whom do 
not know what a good sermon is, is an 
outrage upon clergymen which ought to 
be abolished forthwith. 

But how shall a church know whom to 
choose ? Let it choose a man on his 
record. A clergyman is an epistle known 
and read of all men. He does not do his 
work in a corner. Fidelity in one field 
is a better recommendation than a dozen 
sermons preached on exhibition. If cer- 
tain brethren feel unable to vote for a man 
whom they have not seen and handled, let 
them hear that man in his own church. 
It is their duty to travel to him, and not 
his duty to come to them. But suppose 
the preacher is just out of school } Let 
him be called on his record as a student 
and a man. We shall have a new conse- 
cration among ministers when it is once 
fully understood that a man is called on 
his record. But a church might be dis- 



Secitrhig a Minister. i 59 

appointed ! Of course it might. The 
chances for disappointment, however, are 
not so many as under the present system. 
Many a man who goes up Hke a rocket in 
his first sermon, comes down like a stick 
in his tenth. Hundreds of churches suf- 
fer to-day under the ministry of men who 
were chosen on the impulse of first im- 
pressions, rather than on the record of 
faithful and successful work. 

This is no new^ theory. It has been 
acted on again and again. Many leading 
pulpits are now filled by men who were 
called to their places without preaching as 
candidates. As a rule, it is the little 
churches which are most fussy and fastid- 
ious, and are capable of greatest tyranny 
and folly. Every church w^hich by its 
action registers its disapproval of the 
custom of candidating, does an invaluable 
service, not only to the clergy, but to the 
entire Christian world. 



i6o Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 



XXIII. 

Dismissing a Minister. 

If all ministers had the ability to sense 
a situation, there would be less tribula- 
tion among the saints. But alas ! some 
of the best of men are the stupidest in 
discerning the signs of the times. Some 
times it is not blindness, but a wrong 
philosophy which causes the trouble. The 
minister sees that he is not the man for 
the place, but he hangs on under the 
impression that hanging on is one of the 
rights delivered once for all to the apos- 
tles and their successors. Some clergy- 
men start out wrong, and they stay wrong 
to the end. They place themselves first, 
and the church second. Any minister 
who does that is fated to cause mischief. 
If a man in the ministry is unwilling to 
sacrifice himself for the good of the 



Dismissing a Minister, i6i 

church, he is a dangerous man. Beware 
of him ! There are men who all the way 
through argue every church question from 
the ministerial standpoint. '' I ought to 
receive so much salary — therefore ! " — 
It is just such an argument which ac- 
counts for hundreds of ministerial loaf- 
ers. They never get a pulpit, because the 
salary never reaches their standard. ^^ I 
have a majority of the people with me 
— therefore!" — A man who so argues 
has a devil in him, and is sure to split 
a church. '^ I have my children to edu- 
cate — -therefore! " — As though the chief 
end of a clergyman is to send his chil- 
dren through college. " I have preached 
here many years — therefore ! " — That 
is a pillow on which many a worn-out 
herald of the cross is sleeping. When 
ministers are the slaves of false logic, 
the only relief is to be found in the 
laity. It is the duty of laymen to safe- 
guard the interests of the church, and 
they must do this, though the doing of 



1 62 Qitiet Talks With Earnest People, 

it costs them sacrifice and causes good 
men pain. The long-suffering patience of 
church-members under pastors who are 
intellectually or temperamentally or phys- 
ically unfit for their position, is indescrib- 
ably pathetic. To be sure there are here 
and there crotchety and fickle churches 
which have no mercy on ministers ; but 
for every such church there are a score 
of churches which are willing to bear to 
the uttermost with a minister whose min- 
istry is a long-drawn affliction. 

The forbearance, however, is often the 
product of necessity rather than of grace. 
In sheer helplessness the people submit 
to a scourge which they know not how 
to escape. What is more pitiable than 
the predicament of a church with a min- 
ister who ought to resign and who does 
not have the grace to do it t The usual 
method is to allow things to drag on 
until both sides are worn out. An im- 
mense amount of growling is done behind 
the minister's back, but of square, manly 



Dis7fiissing a Mhiister, 163 

action there is little. Sometimes a slight 
cut in the salary is given as a hint. 
Sometimes the hint takes the form of 
irregular church attendance. But all such 
methods of beating around the bush are 
unbecoming to Christian men. 

Laymen should not hesitate to exercise 
their rights. If a minister is not intel- 
lectually strong enough to lead a parish 
he ought to resign. If he does not re- 
sign of his own accord, he should be 
requested to do it. What right has a 
minister unequal to his task to wreck a 
church simply because the church, in ig- 
norance of his ability, once gave him a 
call.'^ Or if he has crossed the dead line, 
he should be promptly retired. Some 
men cross it early. Some men never 
cross it. Age has nothing to do with it. 
A man crosses it whenever he ceases to 
study. No man who is not a student 
should be allowed to remain in a Chris- 
tian pulpit. It is a burning disgrace that 
so many laymen are indifferent at this 



164 Qiciet Talks With Earnest People, 

point. They allow their pastor to dawdle 
away his time without protest. It is the 
duty of a layman to be up and after a 
minister who commits the unpardonable 
sin of starving his church. Any minister 
who, ordained to preach the gospel, goes 
into the pulpit Sunday after Sunday to 
rehash a few stale exhortations or retail 
a half-dozen insipid anecdotes, ought to 
be driven out of the pulpit by laymen 
burning with the same fiery indignation 
which led the Son of God to hurl thunder- 
bolts at the men who sat in Moses' seat. 

It is not true, as is sometimes taken 
for granted, that a minister has a right 
to hold his pulpit until he dies. His 
term of office is measured by the dura- 
tion of his ability to perform efficiently 
the duties of his ministry. The progress 
of the kingdom of God has been lamen- 
tably delayed by the obstinacy of clergy- 
men who have held on to their places 
long years after their usefulness had 
ceased. What sadder spectacle can there 



Dismissmg a Minister. 165 

be than a church gradually disintegrat- 
ing, its congregations dwindling, its Sun- 
day-school shrivelling, its young people 
scattering, its finances shrinking, its in- 
fluence dying, and all because the good 
man in the pulpit cannot see that the 
hour for his departure is at hand. The 
hoary head is a crown of glory if it be 
found in the way of righteousness, but 
when the gray-headed man is so un- 
righteous as to be willing to kill a church 
rather than have an assistant or get out 
of the way, he ought to receive the re- 
buke which his selfishness deserves. The 
fact that in his prime he did valiant ser- 
vice is not sufficient reason for his re- 
tention. Why rob one generation by 
foisting upon it a man who wore him- 
self out serving the generation preced- 
ing .^ Nor ought his limited bank account 
to be a controlling factor in determining 
the policy of the church. What an out- 
rage, to stunt and starve the spiritual 
life of a community because the minister 



1 66 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

needs a living ! Every church should pay 
its minister so generously that ample pro- 
vision can be made for old age. A few 
hundred dollars added each year to his 
salary to pay for an endowment life in- 
surance policy would take away the neces- 
sity of keeping him in the pulpit after 
his pulpit power has vanished. Courage 
and frankness then are of sovereign im- 
portance. Church officials should express 
to their pastor their deepest convictions. 
Many a minister has been allowed by his 
most intimate friends to go on in utter 
ignorance of the rising feeling against 
him, suffering at last needless and un- 
speakably bitter humiliations, simply be- 
cause his brothers in Christ were too 
timid and tender-hearted to do their 
duty. 



The Minister's Wife. 167 



XXIV. 

The Minister's Wife. 

I KNEW you would want to talk about 
her — people always do. I do not blame 
you. I cannot refrain from saying a word 
about her myself. Since a man and his 
wife are one, no revelation of a minis- 
ter would be complete which ignored or 
slighted the mistress of the manse. 

Yes, she has a hard time, but not so 
hard as some of you imagine. Her trib- 
ulations have been greatly overestimated. 
When she has a harder time than other 
women, it is frequently her own fault. A 
parson's wife has unique opportunities for 
blundering. When such opportunities are 
numberless, it is a rare woman who is able 
to turn her back upon them all. Many a 
minister's wife makes herself wretched by 
attempting the impossible. It is impossi- 



1 68 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

ble, for instance, to please everybody ; and 
woe to the mortal foolish enough to at- 
tempt it. The chief end of woman is not 
to please people, but to do her duty. A 
failure to learn this has wrecked the hap- 
piness of many hearts. Or she may at- 
tempt to keep pace with her husband in 
pastoral calling. A woman who takes 
upon herself the pastoral work of a large 
parish need not be surprised to find her- 
self, sooner or later, in a nervine hospital. 
God punishes women who break his law 
in a foolish ambition to satisfy public ex- 
pectations. Or she may try to walk in 
the footsteps of her predecessor. This 
is a gratuitous method of self-immolation. 
No two women have the same nature, and 
it is foolish to wear one's self out in try- 
ing to do things simply because somebody 
else did them. Or she may allow the 
good women of the parish to place her 
on the twelve thrones of Israel — a pro- 
ceeding which invariably invites disaster. 
Uneasy lies the head that wears twelve 



TJie Minister' ' s Wife, 1 69 

crowns ! It is much better, as a rule, for 
a minister's wife to let other women sit 
on the thrones, while she takes her place 
among the loyal workers who engage in 
obscure and unofficial labors. Because a 
woman is married to a minister, it does 
not follow that she must be the president 
of every organization in the parish, or pre- 
side at every public meeting which women 
may hold. No minister's wife should bear 
any more parish burdens than her own 
good sense tells her she ought to carry. 
To carry them simply because some good 
and officious sister thinks she ought to 
do it is consummate foolishness. 

Much depends upon the way a minis- 
ter's wife uses her tongue. It is not ne- 
cessary for her to talk about her ideas 
of what a church has a right to expect 
of her. People will find out her ideas 
from her conduct. Ministers frequently 
start antagonisms on entering a parish by 
blowing a trumpet at the gate announ- 
cing to the faithful what they propose to 



1 70 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

do. If they would quietly do what they 
propose to do, and say nothing about it, 
there would be less friction and more 
progress. A minister's wife who blows 
a trumpet on entering the town, publish- 
ing what she will do and what she will 
not do, inevitably stirs up oppositions 
which she will never be able to overcome. 
If she intends to perform marvellous feats, 
her intention should be kept a profound 
secret ; if she proposes to shake off most 
of the burdens which the wives of clergy- 
men usually carry, she should be exceed- 
ingly meek and say nothing. The people 
of a parish will allow a minister's wife to 
do practically what she pleases, if she does 
not challenge their criticism by shouting 
from the housetop what she considers her 
privileges and rights. It is remarkable 
how sensible most Christians are if they 
are not provoked to act the fool. Just a 
spark of folly in the pastor or his wife will 
often kindle a conflagration of foolishness 
which no one can extinofuish. Whenever 



The Minister 's Wife. 171 

you hear a clergyman or his wife laying 
down in public the limits of their obliga- 
tions and the extent of their duties, look 
out for a squall. If a minister and his 
wife offend not in tongue, the same are 
a perfect couple. 

But the minister's wife is not always to 
blame. There are women in every parish 
who are adepts in the art of making the 
wife of the minister uncomfortable. They 
can call on her at all hours of the day, 
upsetting her plans and interrupting her 
work. They can everlastingly urge her 
to call on them. If she accepted every 
invitation to call, there would be no time 
left for anything else. They can repeat 
to her all the dismal stories afloat in the 
parish. They can insist upon her tak- 
ing the leadership in every good cause, 
whether God created her for leadership 
or not. They can give her advice with- 
out being asked for it. They can say 
uncharitable things, and make damaging 
comparisons, and — it would take a woman 



1 72 Quiet Talks With Earnest People. 

to enumerate all the things which women 
can do. 

Let her alone. If she has children, and 
wants to stay at home with them, let her 
do it. It is her right to do it. If she 
prefers to give her time to her husband, 
helping him in his correspondence, and 
bearing the burden of household cares, 
let her do it. There are other kinds of 
Christian work besides work done at sew- 
ing-bees and missionary meetings. It is 
work enough for any woman, just taking 
care of a minister. If she is timid and 
retiring, let her alone. What right have 
you to haul her out in public places when 
every fibre of her being revolts against it ? 
If she wants to dress plainly or superbly, 
let her alone. If her husband is satisfied, 
you ought to be. If, on the other hand, 
she insists on running everything, — from 
her own kitchen up to the missionary con- 
vention, — forgive her. Some women are 
made that way ; they cannot help it. If 
she has an unbridled tongue, and persists 



The Minister' s Wife. 173 

in saying things which ought to be left 
unsaid, do not repeat them. A woman 
who rehearses through the parish the fool- 
ish remarks of injudicious women is more 
blameworthy than the women who first 
spoke them. If she has poor taste in 
dress, and slight tact in conversation, and 
scant ability in housekeeping, you, cannot 
cure her by talking. Minister's wives are 
very much like their husbands, — they are 
not perfect. They could, no doubt, have 
been created perfect, but God made them 
to match the men. It is not to be ex- 
pected a woman should be your ideal min- 
ister's wife. It is sufficient that she be 
the ideal of her husband. 



174 Qitiet Talks With Earnest People, 



XXV. 

The Mission of Laymen. 

The New Testament likes laymen. It 
knows nothing of that unique dignity and 
supernatural authority of the clergy which 
have been the curse of the Christian 
world. The church on the day of Pen- 
tecost was a democracy. From the days 
of Moses onward the deepest wish of 
Israel had been, '' Would God that all the 
Lord's people were prophets, that the 
Lord would put his spirit upon them." 
Prophecy at its highest had dared to say 
that such a time was coming. Peter in 
his opening sermon declared that the 
dreams and prophecies of the ages were 
at last fulfilled. God had indeed poured 
out his spirit upon all flesh, — upon women 
as well as men, upon the young as well as 
upon the old. All were prophets. All 



The Mission of Layme^z, 175 

spoke for God. Upon each head there 
sat a tongue of fire. They were all filled 
with the Holy Ghost. The greatest word 
m the Book of the Acts is ^^ All." All were 
baptized ; all spoke ; all prayed ; all spread 
abroad the good tidings ; all participated in 
public worship ; all exercised authority in 
church government ; all were thrilled by 
the rapture of a great love, ennobled 
by the weight of a great responsibility, 
and zealous in the performance of a great 
task. The apostolic church was mighty 
because it was a brotherhood, and all 
believers had all things common. 

But into this new Garden of Eden a 
serpent crawled, — ecclesiastical ambition. 
By slow advances the clergy encroached 
upon the rights of the laity, crowding lay- 
men from the position given them by the 
Lord. The Church of God ceased to be 
a brotherhood. It became a monarchy, 
with rulers and subjects. All authority 
passed little by little into the hands of the 
clergy. With the growth of the hierarchy 



1/6 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

the power and the glory of the church 
of the apostles vanished. The dark ages 
were the ages in which the hierarchy was 
supreme. 

The Reformation in the sixteenth century 
was a triumph of laymen. Martin Luther 
could have done nothing had it not been 
for the laity of Germany. In England 
the head of the Reformation was a layman. 
It was largely by the energy of laymen 
that the English Church was reconstructed ; 
and it was by the laymen of Cromwell's 
army that the Stuart despotism was 
crushed, and the history of political liberty 
was opened. The great event of the six- 
teenth century was the rise of the laity 
in the Christian church. Modern history 
began when the laity resumed their right- 
ful place in public worship. For a thou- 
sand years they had simply assisted at 
rites wrought for them by priestly hands. 
A new day dawned when '' the people 
were called into the chancel," and public 
worship became a common prayer of the 



Tlie Missio7i of Laymcii, 177 

whole body of worshippers. The Book 
of Common Prayer is the monument of an 
immortal triumph. As soon as the Mass, 
which is a sacrifice wrought through 
priestly intervention, was superseded by 
the "communion service," laymen once 
more enjoyed the privilege which belonged 
to them in apostolic days, and tasted anew 
the blessedness of Christian fellowship. 
The stream of centuries was turned out 
of its channel by allowing laymen their 
New-Testament rights as worshippers. 

But the world awaits a new reformation. 
The church to-day is not yet apostolic. 
It limps and halts. In the midst of vast 
opportunities it stands impotent and be- 
wildered. Hundreds of ministers are sick 
at heart. Many of them have grown pes- 
simistic. Occasionally one of them drifts 
into infidelity. The majority of them are 
discouraged. It would be a revelation to 
the world should clergymen speak out 
plainly what they know and suffer. 

We shall never get out of the ditch 



178 Quiet Talks With Earnest People, 

until laymen realize that they also are suc- 
cessors of the apostles. They stand in 
the line of a great succession. They are 
called to be kings and priests unto God. 
The trouble now is that laymen in large 
numbers are not in the church. Their 
names are in the church book, but they 
themselves are not in the church. Some 
of them are in their business, and others 
in their lodge, but too few of them are in 
the church. No man is in the church 
whose heart and mind are not in it. The 
church is hungering for the thought and 
affection of her men. There is enough 
brain-power in every church to solve all 
its problems if this brain-power were uti- 
lized. The problems will never be settled 
so long as men think that paying their 
pew-rent satisfies all the legitimate claims 
which organized Christianity makes upon 
them. The great need of the church is 
not money, but life. With new volumes 
of mental and spiritual energy, money 
would flow in like a mighty stream. Lay- 



Tlie Mission of Laymen, 1 79 

men have won their rights as worshippers, 
they have not yet accepted their privileges 
as workers. This is the next step in the 
world's redemption. 

According to the New^ Testament every 
Christian is a herald, a pastor, a mission- 
ary. Every follower of Christ is ordered 
into the vineyard. Unless he takes up 
his cross daily, he does not belong to 
Christ. But this is a page of the New 
Testament little heeded. '' The fields are 
white unto the harvest, but the laborers 
are few." The minister goes into the 
field, and the majority of his people go 
somewhere else. This, in a sentence, is 
the running sore of Christendom. Why 
are churches half empty } Laymen do 
not work to fill them. Why are deficits 
so universal 1 Laymen do not plan to 
abolish them. Why does the church make 
so few converts } Laymen do not talk on 
the subject of religion. Why does church 
life flow in such feeble streams } Laymen 
do not pour their life into it. 



l8o Qidet. Talks With Earnest People, 

The baptism for which the church is 
waiting is the baptism of larger knowledge. 
We do not seem to know the things which 
belong unto peace. They are hid from 
our eyes. We do not comprehend what 
this means : " One is your Master, and all 
ye are brethren." We stumble over this : 
*^As my P'ather hath sent me, even so 
send I you." We forget to whom this is 
spoken : '' Go and make disciples of all 
the nations." We cannot say w^ith Paul : 
*' I rejoice in my sufferings, and fill up on 
my part that which is lacking of the afflic- 
tions of Christ," because we do not realize 
that we, laymen as well as clergymen, are 
called to be '^laborers together with God." 
And yet, " It is a faithful saying : For if 
we be dead with him, we shall also live 
with him. If we suffer, we shall also reign 
with him." 



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